Ousmane Sembène: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers)
Although the Senegalese filmmaker Sembène (1923–2007) was considered one of the world’s leading directors, his work was largely unknown beyond rarefied cinephile circles. Often called “the Father of African film,” he was a prominent novelist before turning to cinema in 1963 as the best way, considering the widespread prevalence of illiteracy on the continent, to reach a broad African audience. His 1968 first feature, Mandabi, was the first African film to be theatrically exhibited in America, and such subsequent works as Xala (based on his 1973 novel), Guelwaar, and Moolaadé drew worldwide acclaim for their hard-eyed looks at political corruption, Christian-Muslim conflict, and the treatment of women. The 25 interviews collected here, conducted between 1965 and 2005, are drawn from a wide-ranging variety of sources, including English-language film magazines and newspapers, African literary journals, monographs, and Web sites. They offer invaluable insight into the work of this critically important but largely unfamiliar figure, although they tend to focus on political and cultural issues at the expense of Sembène’s cinematic approaches to them. --Gordon Flagg--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.