The Development of Anti-Colonial Film in Post-Independence Senegal, 1960-1980

Note: this article is an abridged version of a research paper, linked here.

Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène is widely regarded as the father of African cinema for his trailblazing contributions to the continent’s film canon. His rise to prominence coincided with the end of French colonialism in Africa, which permitted native political leaders to exercise full control over their countries for the first time in over a century. In the context of my African geography course, I sought out the political and social factors that made Sembène’s artistic success possible.

Black Girl (1966), directed by Ousmane Sembène

Background

During the African colonial era, information technology had been concentrated in the hands of the ruling Europeans. In French West Africa, this took the form of the Afrique Occidentale Français (AOF), a France-administered news service. However, African storytellers gradually gained access to these tools, often via connections at international institutions. In 1958, the Benin-born, Paris-educated filmmaker Paulin Soumanou Vieyra set up a cinema office within Senegal.

Then, in 1960, Socialist Party leader Léopold Senghor was elected as the first president of the Republic of Senegal. His reign, which lasted until 1980, oversaw the management of the post-colonial economy, including its cultural industry. President Senghor appointed Vieyra as director of the state news service, Actualités Sénégalaises. It is in this role that Vieyra produced the propaganda film A Nation is Born, a 19-minute documentary telling the story of the Senegalese nation, which promoted Senegalese and cross-continental labor as the way to overcome the injustices of colonial rule. 

A Nation is Born (1960), directed by Paulin Vieyra

The notion of Pan-Africanist struggle and collaboration played a major role in the work of Vieyra and his contemporaries. Mutual suffering at the hands of Europeans created a greater sense of unity among African artists, despite the ramifications of colonizers’ arbitrary 19th century border-drawing, which divided ethnic, religious and linguistic communities. In a 2022 article, archivist Marco Lena notes that the headquarters of Actualités Sénégalaises occupied the same building as the Senegalese branch of the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) and tended to be “a genuine hotbed of encounter and confrontation, where discussions of politics and cinema often became heated.” Vieyra was identified as playing the middleman between Senghor, whom he worked for, and Sembène, an independent talent. 

Senegalese Independence and Senghorian Socialism

Senghor’s background as a poet and political theorist is critical to understanding his appeal to intellectualism via Négritude, an artistic movement that attempted to unify Black storytellers around the globe. Also Paris-educated, Senghor straddled the line between rejection and imitation of his French predecessors. He supported the founding of the École Nationale des Beaux Arts, and sought to cultivate Black talent from the diaspora by launching the Festival of Black Arts in Dakar in 1966, mimicking Black artist caucuses held in Paris and Rome.

Additionally, in 1973, Senghor oversaw the nationalization of Senegalese cinemas and the creation of the Senegalese Company for Cinematographic Importation, Distribution, and Screening (SIDEC), which brought movie theaters to more remote areas in the country. Though beneficial for filmmakers seeking domestic financing, it is possible that this policy vindicated later instances of Senghor censoring cinematic output that was deemed incompatible with state values.

      Given Senghor’s affinity for Africa-first ideology, it was only natural that the breakaway from French repression should be followed by an optimistic redefinition of what it meant to be Senegalese. Nevertheless, as a Western-educated intellectual, there were many ways that Senghor played to the hand of his former colonizers. At the time of independence, only 3% of Senegalese spoke French – still, President Senghor declared it as the official language. Wolof is the primary language spoken near Dakar, but President Senghor was not a native Wolof speaker and even admitted that he felt more comfortable speaking French than his mother tongue, Serer. He was also Christian, common among the Serer group, in contrast to Senegal’s predominantly Muslim, Wolof-speaking population. Senghor made an attempt to learn Wolof to better connect with his constituencies, but ultimately clung to the French language tradition because it was better for business.

Ceddo (1977), directed by Ousmane Sembène

Ironically, it was the motive of promoting Wolof’s linguistic purity that apparently led Senghor to ban one of Sembène’s movies. Although the filmmaker’s 1975 film Xala was heavily censored for its portrayals of sexuality, his 1977 film Ceddo was outright barred from screening. The official explanation of this policy was President Senghor’s commitment to the correct spelling of the title –– “Cedo” – but it was likely more than just a petty syntax problem (more on this debate from the New York Times). The dynamic between Senghor’s identity as a Roman-Catholic, and the majority of Senegalese, who observe Islam, is mirrored in Sembène’s period piece. In the film, Islamic and Christian religions threaten the livelihoods of the traditional, animist locales, which Senghor may have seen as either personally offensive, or potentially inflammatory when released to Muslim audiences.

The Rise of Ousmane Sembène

Ousmane Sembène, in contrast to Senghor and Vieyra, studied film at the Gorki Film Institute in Moscow, Soviet Union. He had labored as a dockworker in Marseille, France before joining up with the French Communist Party and starting to write novels. Despite his affiliation with secular Marxism, he found an audience back in Muslim-majority Senegal. Sembène started out making his films in French, but he began incorporating Wolof in his 1968 film Mandabi. 

A key motivation for his transition to the visual art form was so that the masses who could not read his French-language novels could at least hear a familiar tongue on screen. His first short film – and the first Africa-set fiction film made by an African – Borom Sarret (1963), follows a wagoner who is trying to make enough money to feed his family. Although the film opens with a shot of a mosque, the film’s societal criticism lies in the post-colonial order, wherein money is still lacking, and native neighborhoods remain segregated from European ones. After a day of no profit for his services, the protagonist resigns that he “might as well die.”

Borom Sarret (1963), directed by Ousmane Sembène

Sembène became more critical of Islamic institutions in the 1970s. Academic David Murphy explains in a 2010 article that Sembène’s popular resentment of French legacy evolved into disdain for “a complex nexus of Islamic/animist and Western capitalist practices… values [which] came to dominate the upper echelons of Senegalese society.” Many of Sembène’s films, including his controversial Ceddo, were co-produced by Filmi Domirev, Sembène’s own Russian language-inspired production company. According to the Harvard Film Archive, Sembène still accepted support from European or American funders, as he was prepared to “sleep with the devil or she-devil to make [his] films.” In fact, the French Ministry of Cooperation’s Bureau du Cinema financed several of his early films, forcing him to conform to certain French-designated standards. He referred to this practice as mégotage, or “cigarette-butt cinema”: African filmmakers employing any means necessary to tell their stories.

Even so, the word “griot” is critical to understanding Sembène’s manner of viewing himself. Traditionally, a griot is a village news sharer – an African Paul Revere. In his 1964 short Niaye, Sembène laments the decline in rural community morality, as people desert their village to make money in cities. Village leaders, in response, compromise their integrity amidst economic deprivation. Sembène wrote that the griot, who confronts the nobles for their actions, is “someone who says what everyone else mumbles.” Sembène believed that the artist occupied a similar role in society, but that it was part of his duty to start conversations.

Niaye (1964), directed by Ousmane Sembène

Consistent with Niaye, Ceddo portrays rural life, but its depiction of 18th century greatness prior to the arrival of colonizing forces aligns with Vieyra’s propagandist transmission of the belief that the country was better off as a pre-industrial people in A Nation is Born. In the political context of these motifs, Sembène’s commitment to socialist ideals would then align with pre-capitalist Senegalese society and criticize any mass, forced diffusion of religion, Christian and Muslim alike.

Cosmopolitan Neocolonialism and the Motherland

The main consensus of Sembène and, later, Djibril Diop Mambéty – an untrained Wolof filmmaker who debuted in 1969 – was that Senegalese independence did not automatically lead to wealth and prosperity. As academic Lifongo Vetinde puts it in a 2012 article, “independence was only a symbolic gesture… since independence, Africans have continued struggling to come to terms with the baffling complexity and indeterminacy of their cultural space.” Although the achievement of self-governance was gratifying, there was a feeling that Western pervasion could not entirely be rectified, and collective morality was dwindling.

Mandabi (1968), directed by Ousmane Sembène

Further, economic opportunities remained sparse. Without strong manufacturing infrastructure or localized higher education institutions, domestic social mobility was limited and often led to the division of families as men sought employment in Europe. In Sembène’s Mandabi (1968), the illiterate Ibrahim receives a money order from his nephew, who has gone to Paris for work. The nephew narrates, over images of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, “do not think I came here to France to go astray or rebel against authority…. I left Dakar because there are no jobs.” He vows not to drink, implying that the vice would be assumed of his departure. The nephew’s need to justify his emigration suggests a sense of remorse, possibly felt by Sembène himself, for playing into European hands by providing labor abroad.

In contrast, Mambéty’s first short film Contras’ City features commentary on the plight of some Muslim devotees within Dakar proper. Dakar, the former capital of French West Africa, was the largest city in the federation, and thus associated with urban ills. The narrator comments on his Dakarian peers, “many have traded their Koran for cognac.” This notion of sacrificing religion for capitalism is thus twofold.

Contras City (1969), directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty

For Mambéty, the son of a Muslim cleric, the root of Western corruption in Africa was its introduction of vice for profit, challenging core Islamic traditions. For Sembène, the sacrifice of African values started long before France’s formal colonization in 1895 (although technically, the conquest dates back to the 17th century). Remnants of French empire were unavoidable in 1960s Dakar, whether it be in the baroque architecture, Catholic churches, or nefarious bureaucracy, despite those who fought to preserve Islamic tradition.

International Visibility and Impact

Senghor’s public support for Senegal’s trajectory to becoming a cultural hub was relatively unique among its African neighbors. In addition to Senghor’s efforts to bring together talent in the Festival of Black Arts, Sembène and Mambéty were able to achieve international credibility through European film festivals. Mambéty’s French New Wave-inspired (and, to some viewers, parody) film Touki Bouki (1975) was made without any French financial assistance, but still screened at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, where it won the International Critics Award. It also won the Special Jury Award at the Moscow Film Festival.

Touki Bouki (1975), directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty

Sembène’s recognition was strongest in the Soviet bloc, and his films Emitaï (1971), Xala (1975) and Ceddo (1975) all screened at Moscow despite being censored in his home country. As the Cold War waned in the late ‘70s, Sembène was invited to be a jury member at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1977, and his final film Moolaadé, released in 2004, screened at Cannes a few years before his death.

Sembène’s significance is perhaps best exemplified by his efforts to pave the way for other African filmmakers. In his 2022 article, archivist Marco Lena shares an anecdote in which Sembène wrote to Les Actualités Sénégalaises to request a camera be loaned to Mauritanian filmmaker Med Hondo. Hondo went on to release Soleil Ô, a defining movie in the anti-colonial film canon. For his part, Senghor stayed closer to France by supporting the creation of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie in 1970, which multiple African directors protested as an attack on art in their native languages.

Soleil Ô (1970), directed by Med Hondo

Unfortunately, the colonial legacy of French control over African film distribution prevails. Filmmaker Elizabeth Mermin attests in a 1995 article that “foreign aid and light government intervention have impeded the creation of an independent inter-African film industry, allowing Europe to continue to represent… the African films of its choice.” Thus, although inter-African collaboration was not uncommon, African filmmakers often compromised their artistry as a means of finding an audience outside of the continent.

Conclusion 

After Senghor left office in 1980, the shape of the film industry changed yet again. Successive presidents had weaker connections to the arts than their poet predecessor, and the domestic funding problem never went away. In the 1990s, a debt crisis struck the African continent. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank promoted austerity measures, leading to disinvestment in theaters and other cultural institutions. Dakar, which was once home to eighty cinemas at its peak, counted only four in 2016.

In 2013, when asked about the state of Senegalese film, TV director El Hadji Mamadou Niang (alias: Leuz) quipped that it does not exist at all. I contend that the creative tension between Senghor and Sembène upon independence is the spark to thank for such a vibrant cultural scene in Senegal’s early days. Their impassioned and divergent visions of Senegal’s future fueled a generation of filmmakers who wanted to contribute their own perspectives.

Camp de Thiaroye (1988), directed by Ousmane Sembène

Sembène, for his part, continued to make confrontational movies throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, although with considerably less frequency. His 1988 film, Camp de Thiaroye, which recounted the events of a WWII-era massacre by the French against West African troops, was censored in both France and Senegal. Senegalese filmmakers like Mambéty, Moussa Touré and Safi Faye followed in his footsteps by using realist art as a political tool. However, in the 21st century, internationally recognized films set in Senegal are still often produced by French artists or second-generation immigrants, such as Cannes Grand Prix winner Mati Diop, the Paris-born niece of Mambéty.

France’s blunt economic control may be waning in the face of Chinese investment in Africa, and the process of returning colonial-era military bases under current President Bassirou Faye is an indicator of the nation’s resignation to a new hegemonic order. Regardless, the continuity of French domination in the language of storytelling and backing of art industries suggest that neo-colonialism remains strong in the cultural sphere.

Atlantics (2017), directed by Mati Diop

Most of Sembène's and Mambéty's films are screening on the Criterion Channel. Special thanks to Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project, which has expanded international access to Senegalese film.

-Lydia