The late Ousmane Semebene (1923-2007) was more than just a black director, or the father of African Cinema, as he is so often called. He also happens to be one of the greatest filmmakers in cinema history. The Senegalese filmmaker - who, with a fifth grade education, as well as a past that also included working on the Marseilles docks, and as a union organizer - directed classic films like "Moolaade," "Camp de Thiaroye," "Black Girl," "Xala" (with still one of the most disturbing endings I've ever seen in a film), and many others, during a career that spanned over 40 years. He vibrantly explored and presented for the entire world, the complexities and...
- 1/6/2016
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
By Michael Atkinson
The seminal will behind everything that matters about sub-Saharan African cinema, and at the same time the world's most guileless filmmaker, Ousmane Sembene was virtually a one-man continental film culture for 40 years, establishing the cinematic syntax and priorities for an entire section of mankind, and its relationship with movies. From the first mini-feature, "Borom Sarret" (1964) to the last, vibrant, polemical film "Moolaadé" (2004), Sembene's work aches with sociopolitical austerity . as an artist, he's virtually style-free, almost unprofessional, but possessed of a voice as clear and uncomplicated as sunlight. Primal, unsophisticated experiences, the films are simple but never simplistic, lowbrow but unsensational, fastidiously realistic and yet unconcerned with sustaining illusion. His filmography is more or less divided between cool, undramatic autopsies on post-colonial norms and folly (1966's "Black Girl," 1968's "Mandabi," 1974's "Xala") and demi-epics of colonial horror (1971's Emitai, 1977's "Ceddo," 1987's "Camp de Thiaroye"). The slow burn,...
The seminal will behind everything that matters about sub-Saharan African cinema, and at the same time the world's most guileless filmmaker, Ousmane Sembene was virtually a one-man continental film culture for 40 years, establishing the cinematic syntax and priorities for an entire section of mankind, and its relationship with movies. From the first mini-feature, "Borom Sarret" (1964) to the last, vibrant, polemical film "Moolaadé" (2004), Sembene's work aches with sociopolitical austerity . as an artist, he's virtually style-free, almost unprofessional, but possessed of a voice as clear and uncomplicated as sunlight. Primal, unsophisticated experiences, the films are simple but never simplistic, lowbrow but unsensational, fastidiously realistic and yet unconcerned with sustaining illusion. His filmography is more or less divided between cool, undramatic autopsies on post-colonial norms and folly (1966's "Black Girl," 1968's "Mandabi," 1974's "Xala") and demi-epics of colonial horror (1971's Emitai, 1977's "Ceddo," 1987's "Camp de Thiaroye"). The slow burn,...
- 3/25/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
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