Ceddo (Ousmane Sembene, 1977)

Tabata Ndiaye in Ceddo

 Cast: Tabata Ndiaye, Alioune Fall, Moustapha Yade, Mamadou N’diaye Diagne, Ousmane Camara, Nar Sene, Makhouredia Gueye, Mamadou Dioum, Oumar Guèye, Pierre Orma, Eloi Coly, Marek Tollik, Ismaila Diagne. Screenplay: Ousmane Sembene. Cinematography: Georges Caristan, Bara Diokhane, Orlando Lopez, Seydina D. Saye. Art direction: Alpha W. Diallo. Film editing: Dominique Blain, Florence Eymon. Music: Manu Dibango. 

In Wolof, ceddo means something like "outsiders" or "others," but the subtitles for Ousmane Sembene's film translate it as "pagan." Which is appropriate in that Sembene's film is about that essential precursor to colonialism: the obliteration of an indigenous religion by a proselytizing religious authority. Ceddo is set in a village in Sub-Saharan Africa in precolonial times -- Sembene said that he imagined it to be the 17th or 18th century. The colony of French West Africa was established in 1895, but the colonizing vanguard was there much earlier in the form of Islamic and Christian missionaries. In Ceddo the village has been mostly converted to Islam, which the village king has accepted. But the ceddo resist the new religion, and kidnap the king's daughter, Dior Yacine (Tabata Ndiaye), who is supposed to marry a Muslim, in conflict with suitors upholding tribal tradition. The struggle to return the princess is bloody. Two white men, a slaver and a Catholic priest, observe the action like eager scavengers. Sembene tells the story with a mixture of straightforward narrative and touches that evoke the future under colonialism. The music track, for example, at one point contains a gospel song sung in English, suggesting the diaspora of slavery. And we see the Catholic priest with what appears to be his sole parishioner in his makeshift chapel, but Sembene cuts to a vision of what the priest longs for: a large congregation with nuns dressed in white and an image of black men rising into heaven. At one point, when the Islamic villagers have won a victory over the ceddo, the imam gives the forced converts their new names. The first one is called Ibrahim, but the second is tellingly given the name Ousmane. Ceddo is an ambitious film, made under difficult circumstances -- the dailies, for example, had to be sent to France to be processed, resulting in a lag of some weeks before Sembene and his crew could know if what they had shot was acceptable. But Sembene's achievement is a remarkable portrait of a continent in transition.