Panel and retrospective celebrate Senegalese film

Any real film buff knows about Godard, Truffaut, and the other luminaries of the French New Wave, but what about the star generation of filmmakers from another French-speaking country, Senegal? “The Master, The Rebel, and the Artist: The Films of Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambéty, and Moussa Sene Absa” is a retrospective presented at the Museum of the Moving Image (36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria) in collaboration with Columbia’s Institute for African Studies. The program seeks to alleviate some of the obscurity that enshrouds African cinema in the eyes of American audiences.

After screenings of two films by each of the three featured Senegalese directors last weekend at the Museum of the Moving Image, the series moved to Columbia’s International Affairs Building on Monday, April 4—the 51st anniversary of Senegal’s independence— for a panel discussion moderated by the director of the Institute for African Studies, Mamadou Diouf. The panel’s all-star lineup included director Moussa Sene Absa, as well as June Givanni, the curator for the series, Samba Gadjigo, Sembène's biographer, Sada Niang, Mambéty's biographer, and Wasis Diop, Mambéty’s brother and lifelong collaborator.

The discussion contextualized the work of Sembène, Mambéty, and Absa within the African cinematic tradition of social realism but also celebrated each director’s own creativity and personal vision of Africa. Absa served as an example of the continuing legacy of Sembène, who died in 2007 and is considered the father of African cinema, and Mambéty, a true legend despite having made only two feature films before passing away in 1998.

Absa, an assistant to Mambéty for his film “Hyenas” (1992), is “a testament to the influence of Djibril and Sembène,” Givanni said.

“I feel their love for their country,” Absa said about Mambéty and Sembène, adding that he too makes films out of love for the Senegalese people. He continued, “I want to put a mirror in front of them and show them how beautiful they are.”

Absa’s films “Tableau ferraille” (1997), a drama about political corruption, and “Teranga Blues” (2007), a hip-hop opera of sorts, will screen at the Museum of the Moving Image this Saturday, April 9 and Sunday, April 10 respectively, both at 7 p.m.

Givanni added that Absa, Sembène, and Mambéty are united by a certain “universality in their work.”
“They’re custodians of history, who include women characters as agents of change and choose to focus on the ‘little people’ of everyday life,” Givanni said. She also pointed out that the three filmmakers are drawn to characters on the fringes of society, particularly gay men and prostitutes, because their lives go “heads-on against tradition.”

Both of Sembène’s films showing at the museum this weekend are character studies of working-class heroines. “Black Girl” (1969), the story of a woman taken to Paris to be a nanny, will screen this Saturday, April 9 at 2 p.m. The film was Sembène’s debut feature and one of the first films to emerge from Africa. Another example of Sembène’s feminism, “Faat Kiné” (2001) screens Sunday, April 10 at 4 p.m. The museum will also show two of Mambéty’s Chaplinesque films this weekend: “Badou Boy” (1970) on April 9 at 4 p.m. and “Le Franc” (1994) on April 10 at 2 p.m.

These screenings offer an opportunity to discover the cinema of a country whose government prevents its own people from seeing such honest and vital depictions of contemporary African society. As Absa pointed out, over the last 50 years, the number of movie theaters in Dakar has dropped from 25 to zero. “People are afraid of the stories we are telling,” he said.