Directed by Ousmane Sembène
10 Episodes
“If Africans do not tell their own stories, Africa will soon disappear,” declared Ousmane Sembène, the Senegalese cinematic revolutionary whose career-long project to illuminate the lives of the marginalized made him the continent’s most influential and widely acclaimed director. A manual laborer turned union activist turned acclaimed writer turned filmmaker, Sembène saw cinema as the ultimate vehicle for his searing social critiques, delivering caustic indictments of colonialism, ruling-class corruption, religion, and the patriarchy in landmark works like BLACK GIRL (recently named one of the greatest films of all time in Sight and Sound magazine’s poll), MANDABI, and XALA. Blending elements of social realism, expressionism, satire, folklore, and the West African griot tradition, his radical, empathetic films created a new cinematic language of resistance.
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59:42Episode 1Black Girl
Episode 1
Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1966 • Senegal
Starring M’Bissine Thérèse DiopOusmane Sembène was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived, as well as the most renowned African director of the twentieth century—and yet his name still deserves to be better known in ...
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Mandabi
Episode 2
Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1968 • Senegal
Starring Makuredia Guey, Yunus Ndiaye, Isseu NiangThis second feature by Ousmane Sembène was the first movie ever made in the Wolof language—a major step toward the realization of the trailblazing Senegalese filmmaker’s dream of creating a cinema by,...
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Emitaï
Episode 3
Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1971 • Senegal
Starring Robert Fontaine, Michel Remaudeau, Pierre BlanchardWith revolutionary outrage, Ousmane Sembène chronicles a period during World War II when French colonial forces in Senegal conscripted young men of the Diola people and attempted to seize ri...
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Xala
Episode 4
Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1975 • Senegal
Starring Thierno Leye, Myriam Niang, Seune SambAn adaptation of Ousmane Sembène’s own 1973 novel, XALA is a hilarious, caustic satire of political corruption under an inept patriarchy. On the night of his wedding to his third bride, government offici...
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Ceddo
Episode 5
Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1977 • Senegal
Starring Mamadou Dioumé, Ousmane Sembène, Tabata NdiayeIn precolonial Senegal, members of the Ceddo (or “outsiders”) kidnap Princess Dior Yacine (Tabata Ndiaye) after her father, the king, pledges loyalty to an ascendant Islamic faction that plans to...
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Guelwaar
Episode 6
Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1992 • France, Germany, Senegal, United States
Starring Thierno Ndiaye Doss, Mame Ndoumbé Diop, Myriam Niang“Guelwaar” is the nickname of Pierre Henri Thioune (Thierno Ndiaye), a political radical and agitator whose criticism of Senegal’s reliance on foreign aid ru...
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20:21Episode 7Borom sarret
Episode 7
Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1963 • Senegal
Starring Ly Abdoulay, AlbourahThis groundbreaking short film, which won first prize at the 1963 Touris Film Festival in France, was the directorial debut of Ousmane Sembène.
Restored in 2013 by the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory...
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Niaye
Episode 8
Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1964 • Senegal
Starring Sow, Astou Ndiaye, Mame DiaIn this early short film, adapted from his own novella “White Genesis,” Ousmane Sembène offers a portrait of a Senegalese village in decline, where the chief has impregnated his own daughter, a soldier has come bac...
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1:00:47Episode 10Sembène: The Making of African Cinema
Episode 10
Made by Manthia Diawara and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o in 1994, this documentary illuminates the philosophies and aesthetics of director Ousmane Sembène through conversations with Diawara, film students, and filmmaker John Singleton.
