African Cinema Giant Ousmane Sembene, 84, Dies
Led Cinema's Advance in
Africa

Agence France-Presse

The Senegalese filmmaker and writer Ousmane Sembene, a
pioneer of African cinema, died at his home in Dakar,
Senegal, his friends and family said Sunday. He was 84.

He had been ill since December.

Born into a fisherman's family in 1923, he worked as a
mechanic, carpenter and builder in Africa and Europe
before being drafted by the French Army in World War
II. Those experiences gave Mr. Sembene, a self-educated
writer, material for films as well as books like The
Black Docker, God's Bits of Wood and The Money
Order.

He said that he decided to go to film school, in
Moscow, after realizing that "pictures are more
accessible than words." That led him to what he called
"fairground cinema."

"I can go to a village and show the film," he explained
in 2005, "because everything can be filmed and
transported to the most remote village in Africa."

His career began in the 1960s with black-and-white
shorts like "Borom Sarret," about a poor cart-driver.
His "Black Girl From ..." (1966), about a Senegalese
girl who becomes a servant in France, is considered the
first full-length feature by an African filmmaker.

One of his last films, "Moolaadé" (2004), was a
denunciation of female genital cutting and won a jury
prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

He also won two prizes at the Venice Film Festival, in
1968 and in 1988. The first was for "The Money Order,"
the second for "The Camp of Thiaroye," which recounts
the violent repression by French troops of protests by
Senegalese soldiers demanding their pay. He was among
the first African artists to warn of the danger of
excesses in the post-colonial era and to call for "a
radical change in African policies."

The former Senegalese president Abdlu Diouf said Africa
had lost one its greatest filmmakers and a "fervent
defender of liberty and social justice."

A tribute from Mali's culture minister, Cheick Oumar
Sissoko, himself a filmmaker and a friend of Mr.
Sembene, said that "African cinema has lost one of its
lighthouses."

"The man only worked fully in Africa and for Africa,"
he said. Mr. Sembene "led Africa to understand its
identity and build its cultural horizon."