sembene remembrance on walker blog

The Walker's retrospective on Ousmane Sembene ended this weekend, and to commemorate the event they invited local videomaker Aleshia Mueller to say a few words on the artist:

Hailed as the father of African cinema, Sembene was also seen as an artistic and cinematic revolutionary. He was a passionate anti-colonialist and injected true Senegalese culture and common routines into his films. Up until Mandabi in 1968, the mentality was that a film had to be made in French, but Sembene was committed to promoting his national language and culture. Drawing on his roots, he gathered lost voices and brought them back to life. He emphasized, “Art is political. Without art, there are no free men.”

Most of my knowledge surrounding Sembene comes more from essays than his movies.  With that I would add that his films not only provoked Europeans and former colonial powers, but they even questioned Senegalese assumptions about their own heritage.