Sembene Across Africa

Arts Reporter
Galle Ceddo Projects, in conjunction with a number of African institutions, presents The Sembene Across Africa project.

The three-day series of free public screenings, house parties and free streaming of the award-winning documentary film “SEMBENE!”, starts from June 9 to 11.

The film celebrates Ousmane Sembene, the “father of African cinema,” who spent decades shaping a meaningful, visionary cinema for a newly independent Africa. “SEMBENE!” premièred in competition at the Sundance and Cannes film festivals.

The play screened throughout the world and was included in seven best of 2015 lists, including a top 10 of 2015 notice from New York magazine. To date, more than 90 public screenings in 30 countries have been confirmed, with more venues being added on a daily basis.

All screenings are provided free of charge while funding was provided from the Ford Foundation and the Sundance Institute, and through a grassroots efforts, including a Kickstarter campaign that ran from May 1 to 25 this year.

All events feature post-film discussions, with many introduced by scholars and filmmakers. In addition to the screenings, seminars will be held in Dakar, Senegal, Ouagadougo, Burkina Faso and Guinea-Conkary. “Full details on screenings, streaming opportunities, educational events and broadcast will be posted on our website,” Jason Silverman, one of the directors in the country, said.

The project’s prominent team of advisors, producers and consultants includes Kenya’s Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Fatou Kande Senghor, Ousmane Sene and Rama Thiaw of Senegal.

Others include Gaston Kabore (Burkina Faso), Samanta Etane and Issa Nyaphaga of Cameroon, Dr N André Siamundele (Democratic Republic of Congo), Fibby Kioria (Uganda) and Mickey Fonseca (Mozambique) while more will be added to the production.

The project is motivated by Sembene’s desire — unfulfilled in his lifetime after 50 years of focused work — to return African stories to the African people. For decades, during Africa’s colonial period and until African independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s, European-run schools, newspapers, TV, movies and languages were Africa’s dominant cultural forces.

African culture was criminalised and marginalised, and many Africans lost connection with their past. Starting with his first film, “Borom Sarret”, completed in 1962, Sembene set out to use movies as what he called “an evening school” for Africans.

His works revisited history from African perspectives, called out corrupt leaders and celebrated what he called “the heroes of the everyday.” Sembene spent 50 years making films and writing books in a tireless and forceful attempt to reorient Africans after generations of colonisation. Unfortunately, 10 years after his death, Sembene — a true hero of cinema and of self-empowerment — remains unknown to most young Africans.

This focused, continent-wide event will celebrate Sembene’s message of self-empowerment, ownership of one’s own culture and Pan-Africanism. “Sembene Across Africa is designed to inspire anyone working for African progress,” said Samba Gadjigo, the director of “SEMBENE!” and Ousmane Sembene’s official biographer.”

This project represents a giant step towards our primary goal: to inject Sembene’s essential legacy of engaged, empowering and progress-minded storytelling back into the African consciousness.

Using the new tools of cultural empowerment — digital delivery, social media, grassroots organising — we hope to share Sembene’s powerful story across an entire continent, to the large audience that will appreciate “SEMBENE!” the most.”