Sembene at IAS (Ghana)

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ABOUT SEMBENE ACROSS AFRICA:

The Sembene Across Africa project presented a three-day series of free public screenings, house parties, free streaming and broadcast of the documentary feature SEMBENE! The public screenings were held in 38 African nations June 9-11, 2017, dates chosen in remembrance of Sembene’s death in June 2007. Seminars exploring Ousmane Sembene, “the father of African cinema,” were held in Dakar and Saint Louis, Senegal; Ouagadougo, Burkina Faso; Conakry, Guinea; Yaounde, Cameroon and other universities and cultural centers.

For many years, until African independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s, European-run schools, newspapers, TV, movies and languages were Africa’s dominant cultural forces. African culture was criminalized and marginalized, and many Africans lost connection with their past. Starting with his first film, Borom Sarret, completed in 1962, Sembene set out to use movies as what he called “an evening school” for Africans. His works revisited history from African

perspectives, called out corrupt leaders and celebrated what he called “the heroes of the everyday.” Sembene spent 50 years making films and writing books in a tireless and forceful attempt to reorient Africans after generations of colonization. Unfortunately, 10 years after his death, Sembene—a true hero of cinema and of self-empowerment—remains unknown to most young Africans. Similarly, our award-winning biographical documentary SEMBENE!, despite being publicly exhibited, streamed and broadcast around the world, remains difficult for African audiences to access. Our focused, continent-wide event celebrated Sembene’s message of self-empowerment, ownership of one’s own culture and Pan Africanism. Sembene Across Africa was intended to inspire anyone working for African progress. This project represented a giant step

towards the primary goal of our ongoing project: to inject Sembene’s essential legacy of engaged, empowering and progress-minded storytelling back into the African consciousness. Using the new tools of cultural empowerment—digital delivery, social media, grassroots organizing—we shared Sembene’s powerful story across an entire continent, to the large audience that appreciates SEMBENE! the most. The project also represented a modest, and modestly successful, experiment in allowing Africans, in an emerging age of digital delivery, to produce their own African cinema events.

BACKGROUND AND STRATEGY

Ousmane Sembene seemed an unlikely candidate to become a giant of 20th-century cinema and literature. The son of a Senegalese fisherman, Sembene was expelled from school in the fifth grade and worked as a manual laborer for 25 years. In his 30s, he taught himself how to write; he was still a dockworker when he completed his first novel in 1956. Sembene intended to address a void in world literature: His African experience was missing. In Sembene’s youth, the French colonial authorities criminalized cameras for Africans, and African languages were forbidden in schools. How, in the age of a new, independent Africa, could the continent become truly free, and united? Sembene believed that Africa’s future depended on reclaiming and creating its own stories, and became a powerful voice in the African independence movement. His 1960 novel God’s Bits of Wood remains the iconic novel of that transformative moment. Shortly after, and against the longest of odds, Sembene began making movies, hoping to provide African stories as an “evening school” for African workers, 95% of whom had not been taught to read.

Our film SEMBENE! (by Sembene’s colleague and chosen biographer Samba Gadjigo, and Jason Silverman) tells how Sembene began dreaming this impossible dream: to become the storyteller for a new Africa. Using clips from his visionary, still-powerful films, and weaving in Gadjigo’s own remarkable story, the documentary revisits 80 years of African history, through African eyes. From the repressive policies of the colonial era, to the thrilling moments when Africa is liberated, through the crushing post-independence years, and into the present, where new generations

struggle for renewal, SEMBENE! builds a case for the power of owning and transmitting one’s own story.

With great clarity, Sembene recognized the systems that allowed the corrupt to exploit the powerless. He used his storytelling to expose them, envisioning a continent that could serve as model of equality and justice. Today, 10 years after Sembene’s death, and more than 60 years after the beginning of the end of European colonial rule, Sembene’s vision of a united, liberated Africa remain elusive. Outside forces continue to dictate social and economic policy, and

poverty, war, inequality and political strife remain daily forces for most Africans. Though creative freedoms have expanded, most of Africa remains swamped by outside stories, from Hollywood, Europe and elsewhere. However, Sembene’s unyielding hopes for a better Africa live on in his passionate, brilliantly articulated films (he wrote and directed nine features, many of which are classics of world cinema). Sembene himself remains a role model, both for his insistence on self-empowerment, and for his commitment to reclaiming African culture and history.

Sembene believed these stories could be used to fight injustice, corruption, and ignorance, and to celebrate “the heroism of the everyday.” In a better world, Sembene would be an icon for a new generation in Africa. However, due to the continent-wide challenges—the lack of theaters and public spaces, European control of broadcast, limited digital opportunities—he remains unknown to most Africans.

Our experience with SEMBENE! demonstrates Africa’s hunger for redemptive, empowering African stories. The film played in competition at Sundance, and was eligible for the Camera d’Or at Cannes, has won numerous awards, and was included on best-of-2015 lists by New York magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Movie City News, RogerEbert.com and OkayAfrica. Prior to our screening series, it received rapturous response in its limited African screenings, with sold-out crowds in South Africa, Egypt (it won the Grand Prize at the Luxor festival), Burkina Faso (it

was the opening night event at the biennial FESPACO festival), Senegal, Ghana, Gabon and Kenya. News of African screenings on our Facebook page have brought enormous response: our initial post about the series received 1.2 million views.

The film inspires those who see it, by offering a real-life hero to those who have seen far too few of them on their screens; by revisiting African history through an African lens; and by providing a reminder of the redemptive power of storytelling. The film itself reinforces the values of African self-empowerment that Sembene promoted: It was directed by a Senegalese man, Samba Gadjigo, who grew up in a remote, rural African village without electricity or running water, left home at 14 and who, through force of will, transformed himself into a leading African scholar.

This series of free screenings, with the licensing costs donated by our production company, was hosted by local organizations and institutions throughout Africa and beyond, presented in private venues as house parties, offered as streaming video for those who want to watch on their own, and promoted via grassroots tools, including social media and local publicity. Viewers were pointed to online resources at our website, and asked for feedback. The film was also broadcast in select regions that weekend, and streamed, free of charge, where possible. Though limited numbers of viewers have seen the film, a considerably larger population has heard about Sembene and his films.

While no single film can address Africa’s entrenched structural challenges, we hope these screenings will hold significant symbolic power, a marker of possibility and hope, a seed planted. We made SEMBENE! for African audiences, and though it has been publicly screened, broadcast and streamed throughout Europe and the U.S., Africa’s infrastructure challenges had made dissemination more challenging. Our goal was to spark a new conversation about Sembene, and the many issues—empowerment, corruption, feminism, collective action—that his work explored.