Ousmane Sembene, Rest in Peace

I cannot think of any film director (other than, perhaps Satyajit Ray for India) who defined serious cinema for an entire region than Ousmane Sembene, who was the very embodiment of African cinema. His passing last weekend, rather than a cause for mourning is a cause for a serious revisiting of his best work.

I became acquainted with Sembene's work with hours spent at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. Films such as Xala, Black Girl, and Emitai opened my eyes to the perceptions of Africans toward the west and their former colonizers. Ceddo, a film that desperately deserves a rerelease or at least a DVD release, captured the struggle of people facing the onslaught of religious colonizing from both Islam and Christianity. There are few films that say so much in such a short time as Borom Sarret. I was also thrilled to acquaint myself through his films with the sound of Wolof, one of the official languages of Senegal.

Sembene was so much more than a filmmaker. He was a published author, one time dockworker, union organizer and chronicler of life. What a pity that so little of his work is available as DVD's.