Guelwaar (Ousmane Sembene, 1992)

Thierno Ndiaye and Mame Ndoumbé Diop in Guelwaar

Cast: Thierno Ndiaye, Mame Ndoumbe Diop, Omar Seck, Ndiawar Diop, Marie Augustine Diatta, Moustapha Diop, Babacar Faye, Sadara Mbaye. Screenplay: Ousmane Sembene. Cinematography: Dominique Gentil. Film editing: Marie-Aimée Debril. Music: Baaba Mal. 

The protagonist of Ousmane Sembene's sharply ironic tragicomedy Guelwaar is postcolonial Africa itself, viewed with a mixture of hope and frustration like that of the Europeanized Barthelemy (Nidiawar Diop) in the film, who often utters an exasperated "Africa!" when he encounters bureaucratic and cultural roadblocks in his attempt to bury his father. Actually, Barthelemy is trying to re-bury his father, Pierre Henri Thioune (Thierno Ndiaye), a political activist called by his followers "Guelwaar" (noble one), who died following a beating by political opponents. His body was mistakenly removed from the morgue and buried in a Muslim cemetery. Although Pierre Henri was a Catholic, the heads of the Muslim community don't want the grave disturbed to verify the identity of the corpse. The expatriate Barthelemy is not the best person to handle the problem, attracting suspicion from the authorities because he has become a French citizen, but he's the only member of the family capable of taking charge: His widowed mother, Nogoy Marie (Mame Ndoumbé Diop), is prostrate with grief; his sister, Sophie (Marie Augustine Diatta), is a sex worker in Dakar, and hence something of an outcast; and his younger brother, Alois (Moustapha Diop), is handicapped, crippled after a fall from a tree. Tensions build between Catholics and Muslims, and ultimately troops are called in by the area's representative in the legislature to keep violence from breaking out. Sembene tells the story beautifully, if occasionally resorting to the kind of blatant expository dialogue and didactic commentary aimed at his audience. Pierre Henri's radical politics center on an issue that reminds us how the causes of both right and left can sometimes converge: foreign aid to developing counties. He opposes the shipments of supposedly humanitarian aid such as food to his country, seeing it a tool used by foreign governments to gain influence, a cause of corruption in the government that distributes it, and a hindrance to the growth of a self-sustaining Africa. Sembene clearly endorses that view when, at the very end of the film, the young followers of the Guelwaar tear open the bags of rice and flour and the procession of carts carrying the funeral entourage drives over the spillage in an ironic triumph. With its keen portrayal of religious tensions, corruption, bureaucracy, and economic hardship, Guelwaar is a fine satiric blend of humor and pain, one of Sembene's best films.

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.   

Emitaï (Ousmane Sembene, 1971)

Cast: Andongo Diabon, Robert Fontaine, Michel Renaudeau, Osmane Camara, Ibou Camara, Alphonse Diatta, Pierre Blanchard. Screenplay: Ousmane Sembene. Cinematography: Georges Caristan, Michel Renaudeau. Film editing: Gilbert Kikouïne. 

I grew up on Hollywood films, which were all that were available in the small town where I lived. (This was before cable TV, not to mention streaming.) They made me love movies, but they also gave me a limited awareness of what film could do. So when foreign films finally became part of my movie-watching life, I was astonished at how little I knew about what cinema could be, but also about how limited my experience of human behavior was. The people in the French and Italian and Swedish films I saw didn't behave the way people in American movies did and the way the filmmakers told their stories was somehow different from the way Hollywood did. There were fewer happy endings and predictable plot turns. And when I moved beyond European films into the work of Asian directors, there was still more culture shock coming. But as my cinematic horizons widened, and I came to embrace Satyajit Ray along with Nicholas Ray, to rank Ozu and Renoir among my favorite directors alongside Hitchcock and Hawks, there still remained (and remains) an ignorance of what's called "world cinema," the work of filmmakers outside the developed countries of Europe and Asia. I still approach these movies with a bit of trepidation, uncertain whether the differences between the cultures they show and my own will stymie my understanding and appreciation of their work. So I'm working my way through the Criterion Channel's collection of the films of Ousmane Sembene with a kind of divided awareness. I have to remind myself that these movies weren't made for me, but for an African audience. There's a kind of urgency about his films that's more vital for the intended audience than it is for me. Emitaï is set in Senegal during World War II, when the French drafted the native people of their colonies into the fight. It takes place in a village that resents having its young men taken away and its rice crop collected as taxation. But there's no resisting the superior arms of the French authorities, and the film evokes the impotence and frustration of the villagers. The elders decide to call on their gods, which we actually see in a fantasy sequence, but they get no help. Sembene depicts the latent strength of the tribe, especially its women, but this conflict of cultures can only end tragically. Sometimes, Sembene's storytelling relies on blatantly expository dialogue and didactic speeches that verge on propaganda, but this is anything but naïve filmmaking. Emitaï is a subtle and poignant depiction of the destructive absurdity of colonialism.  

Mandabi (Ousmane Sembene, 1968)

Ynousse N'Diaye, Makhouredia Gueye, and Isseu Niang

Cast: Makhouredia Gueye, Ynousse N'Diave, Isseu Niang, Mustapha Ture, Farba Sarr, Serigne Diayes, Thérèse Bas, Mouss Diaf, Christof Colomb. Screenplay: Ousmane Sembene. Cinematography: Paul Soulignac. Film editing: Gilbert Kikoïne, Max Saldinger.

When we first see Ibrahim Dieng (Makhouredia Gueye), he is having his head shaved and his nose cleaned. Then he strolls through the streets of Dakar, immaculate head held high, the very image of smug prosperity. He is anything but prosperous, of course: He is stone broke, having been unemployed for a very long time, supporting himself, his two wives, and seven children with a combination of handouts and loans, sustained mainly by his pride and a Micawberish sense that something will turn up. That something turns up in the form of a money order from his nephew, a street sweeper in Paris, and it will be the undoing of Ibrahim. Most of the money his nephew sent is not his: Part of it is to go into the nephew's savings, part to his mother, Ibrahim's sister (Thérèse Bas), who is a formidable force herself. The little left over goes to Ibrahim, and the thought of it elicits a brief period of delight -- one of the wives even makes up a song about the money order. But when word of it gets about, Ibrahim is immediately set upon by creditors and handout seekers. Mandabi (which means "money order") is a tragicomic film about postcolonial Africa, its people strangled by governmental corruption. Ibrahim is caught in a Catch-22: He can't cash the money order without an identity card. He can't get an identity card without a birth certificate. He can't get a birth certificate without some form of identification. The bureaucracy that frustrates him is both Dickensian and Kafkaesque. Ousmane Sembene tells Ibrahim's story with sympathy, but also with a smart distancing from the character, whose faults he makes all too clear. The only problem I had with the film is that it ends with a didactic speech by a character delivering the message: People should work to end the corruption that results in such misery. But Mandabi wasn't made for me, but for people like the ones it portrays. It was the first feature made in Wolof, the indigenous language of Senegal, which Sembene chose over French, the official language imposed by colonialism. "Message movies" may be tiresome to us Westerners, but they were an important tool for filmmakers like Sembene. 

Xala (Ousmane Sembene, 1975)

Thierno Leye and Dyella Touré in Xala

Cast: Thierno Leye, Myriam Niang, Seune Samb, Fatim Diagne, Younouss Seye, Mustapha Ture, Iliaman Sagna, Dieynaba Niang, Langouste Drobe, Farba Sarr, Abdoulaye Boye, Papa Diop, Martin Sow, Mamadou Sarr, Makhouredia Gueye. Screenplay: Ousmane Sembene, based on his novel. Cinematography: Georges Caristan, Orlando L. López, Seydina D. Saye, Farba Seck. Film editing: Florence Eymon. Music: Samba Diabare Samb.

Xala is a sharp-edged, often very funny satire on the failings of postcolonial Africa, namely, the adoption of European ways to the neglect of traditional African culture. The result is a kind of impotence, which is what the title means, and which manifests itself not only in the sexual dysfunction experienced by El Hadj Aboucader Beye (Thierno Leye) on the night of his wedding to his third wife but also in the dysfunctional business and political world to which El Hadj belongs. His first wife, Adja (Seune Samb), and his second, Oumi (Younouss Seye), are very much alive and present to kibitz at the wedding reception. Adja sticks to traditional garb, while Oumi adopts European dress, so they represent two polarities in El Hadj's life and culture. He also has a daughter by Adja, Rama (Myriam Niang), who is sharply critical of his Westernized ways: When he offers her a glass of water and pours it from an Evian bottle, she snaps that she doesn't drink imported water. (Evian becomes another symbol of his European ways, when we see his chauffeur use a bottle of it to wash El Hadj's Mercedes and another to fill up the radiator.) Rama also refuses to speak anything but Wolof to El Hadj, even though he replies in French. The film deals largely with El Hadj's attempts to cure his sexual dysfunction, which leads him eventually to the holy man of his chauffeur's village, who temporarily cures him, but then exacts a revenge when El Hadj's check bounces, teaching him a lesson about ignoring the people of his country while kowtowing to the Europeans. Xala is a keenly observant movie, sometimes to the point of discomfort, and though its two-hour run time is a little slackly paced and the acting sometimes not all you could wish, it makes its point effectively.

Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene, 1966)

Mbissine Thérèse Diop in Black Girl

Diouana: Mbissine Thérèse Diop
Madame: Anne-Marie Jelinek
Monsieur: Robert Fontaine
Diouana's Boyfriend: Momar Nar Sene
Boy With Mask: Ibrahima Boy

Director: Ousmane Sembene
Screenplay: Ousmane Sembene
Based on a story by Ousmane Sembene
Cinematography: Christian Lacoste

With a run time of just about an hour, Black Girl is a marvel of condensed storytelling, even though it uses a sophisticated technique like flashbacks to create its powerful portrait of the wounds of colonialism. It begins in medias res, with Diouana's arrival in France to serve as the maid -- although she expects to work as a nanny, as she had in Dakar -- to a French couple. We learn a bit of her life in Senegal at the same time that we see her disillusionment and eventual slump into depression with what she becomes in the small apartment in Antibes of the couple. The children are away -- presumably at boarding school or with relatives -- and Diouana is forced into a round of cooking and cleaning that she had never expected. She sees nothing of the city outside of the apartment, and is subjected to insults from the couple's guests: An older man, for example, insists on grabbing her and kissing her because, he says, "I've never kissed a negress." The Frenchwoman's friends chatter about Diouana as if she is invisible, asking if she understands French. Told that she does, one of them says she must do so "instinctually" and adds, "like an animal." The result of the exploitation and abuse is tragic, and although what happens might seem melodramatic to some, I think it feels consistent with the way Sembene tells the story, almost as a moral fable. The central symbol of the fable is a mask that Diouana gave to her employers when she first went to work for them in Dakar. She finds it hanging on a wall of the stark modern apartment in Antibes, a touch of decor without significance, and when she decides she's had enough with her life there, she takes it down and puts it with her luggage. She never goes back to Dakar, however, but the man for whom she worked does, and he returns the mask with her belongings to Diouana's mother. A small boy, whom we first saw playing with the mask before Diouana gave it away, finds it and follows the Frenchman, who takes fright and runs away from him -- the European colonizer fleeing the new Africa.