Ousmane Sembène, 1923 - 2007.

Ousmane Sembène, the Senegalese filmmaker and writer who was a crucial figure in Africa's postcolonial cultural awakening, has died at his home in Dakar, Senegal. His family, which announced his death on Sunday, said Mr Sembène had been ill since December. He was 84.

Widely seen as the father of African cinema, Mr Sembène took up filmmaking in the 1960s, in part because he believed that film could reach a wider and more diverse African audience than literature.... The tensions between tradition and modernity and between newly independent African nations and their erstwhile colonial masters are sources of drama and comedy in his films, which are nonetheless focused on the lives of ordinary people, frequently women.

AO Scott in the New York Times.

See also: Samba Gadjigo's site; Serigne Ndiaye's page; Ray Pride's interview for Cinema Scope; the Wikipedia entry.

Updated through 6/13.

Updates: "His first feature, La Noire de... (Black Girl) in 1966, shot in black and white, is a searing account of the isolation of a young black domestic servant working in Antibes, and the first African feature produced and directed by an African," writes Sheila Whitaker in the Guardian. "'For us, African filmmakers, it was then necessary to become political, to become involved in a struggle against all the ills of man's cupidity, envy, individualism, the nouveau-riche mentality, and all the things we have inherited from the colonial and neo-colonial systems,' Sembène stated."

At the House Next Door, Keith Uhlich rounds up more suggestions for further clicking.

Updates, 6/12: AO Scott follows up with an appraisal: "[I]t is hard to overstate his importance, or his influence on African film and also, more generally, on African intellectual and cultural self-perception."

Online listening tip. Neda Ulaby on NPR.

Updates, 6/13: Ed Ward tells a great story.

"For me, his masterpiece remains the 1977 period drama Ceddo which fuses his core concerns into his most compelling narrative all coupled with simple but rich production design," writes clarencecarter at Reverse Shot's blog. "Its story of kidnapped princess and internecine warfare is a world unto its own, but given that we're dealing with a most political of filmmakers, its distant history concerning the introduction of Islam to Africa sends out a clarion call to the present moment: beware of interlopers."

Posted by dwhudson at June 11, 2007 12:09 AM