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Biography of Ousmane SembèneName: Ousmane SembèneBirth Date: January 8, 1923 Death Date: N/A Place of Birth: Ziguinchor, Casamance, Senegal Nationality: Senegalese Gender: Male Occupations: author, filmmaker Ousmane Sembène The Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (born 1923) is one of Africa's great contemporary novelists and the father of African cinema. His work is characterized by a concern with ordinary decent people who are victimized by repressive governments and bureaucracies. Several of his films have been censored in Senegal because of their political criticism.Ousmane Sembène was born on Jan. 8, 1923, at Ziguinchor in the southern region of Casamance in colonial French West Africa, now Senegal. Among Francophone African writers, he was unique because of his working-class background and limited primary school education. Originally a fisherman in Casamance, he worked in Dakar as a plumber, bricklayer, and mechanic. In 1939 he was drafted into the colonial army and fought with the French in Italy and Germany and then participated in the liberation of France. He settled in Marseilles, where he worked on the piers and became the leader …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…of entertainment for foreigners," he said. "Now, however, African filmmakers are raising real issues.... People are thus slowly starting to identify with their history and the cinema is becoming something real." Over the years, Sembène's films have questioned colonialists, fundamentalists, peasants, and the new bourgeoisie. "It's not me, it's my people that evolve," Sembène said. "I live among them; I'm like the thermometer." Further Reading Michael Atkinson's "Ousmane Sembène" Film Comment is one of the best sources on Sembène's films. Claude Wauthier's descriptive summary of a host of black writers, including Sembène, appeared in English as The Literature and Thought of Modern Africa (1964; trans. 1966). A chapter on Sembène is in A.C. Brench, The Novelists' Inheritance in French Africa: Writers from Senegal to Cameroon (1967). An interview with Sembène by Daphne Topouzis appears in Africa Report (November-December 1990). |