Ousmane Sembène

Ousmane Sembène PDF Author: Annett Busch
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781934110867
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Collected interviews with the African filmmaker who directed Black Girl, Mandabi, Xala, Ceddo, Faat Kine, and Moolaade

Ousmane Sembène

Ousmane Sembène PDF Author: Annett Busch
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781934110867
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Collected interviews with the African filmmaker who directed Black Girl, Mandabi, Xala, Ceddo, Faat Kine, and Moolaade

The Films of Ousmane Sembène

The Films of Ousmane Sembène PDF Author: Amadou Tidiane Fofana
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604978315
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Ousmane Sembene was a Senegalese film director, producer, and writer whom the Los Angeles Times considered one of the greatest authors of Africa. Often called the "father of African film," Sembene strongly believed that African films should be geared primarily toward educating the masses and making the philosophical quandaries and political issues contested by elites accessible to the poor and those with little to no formal education.Although Sembene's central aim was to reach African audiences and encourage a dialogue within Senegalese society, his films are also extraordinarily effective in introducing non-African audiences to many of the most intriguing cultural issues and social changes facing African people today. The films are not fast paced in the manner of many Hollywood films. Rather, they are deliberately unhurried and driven by the narrative. They show actual ways of life, social relations, and patterns of communication and consumption, and the joys and tribulations of West African people. For people who have never been to Africa, the films offer an accessible first gaze. For those who have visited or lived in an African culture, the films provide a way to explore African society and culture more profoundly. Sembene was an independent filmmaker, solely and totally responsible for the content of his films, which were inspired by the realities of daily life. This focus on microcosmic social relations and day-to-day politics is so central to Sembene art, his films breed provocative commentary on social, historical, political, economic, linguistic, religious, and gender issues relevant to Senegalese society. Because of his concern with daily Senegalese life, Sembene targeted the common people whose voices are seldom or never heard. In fact, depicting the struggles and concerns of average Senegalese people was a central preoccupation of his films, as he himself has articulated. This study examines the artistry of Sembene's films as well as the multitude of signifying elements Sembene uses in them to communicate in less direct ways with his audience. The book interprets the meaning conveyed by images through their placement and function within the films, and it contributes new insights into Sembene's interpretations of cultural practices and the meanings he ascribes to social behaviors. It examines how Sembene uses language, mise-en-scene, cinematography, and creative editing to evoke the emotions of his targeted audience. Several chapters in the volume also demonstrate how the many ironies and political economic tensions that are so characteristic of Sembene's work are best understood within the sociocultural context of each film's production. Hence, to make sense of Sembene's cinema, one must be willing to read beyond the denoted meaning of the storyline and to dig into the cultural significance of the carefully selected and manipulated codes and images.

Xala

Xala PDF Author: James S. Williams
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1839026006
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Xala (1974) by the pioneering Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, was acclaimed on its release for its scorching critique of postcolonial African society, and it cemented Sembene's status as a wholly new kind of politically engaged, pan-African, auteur film-maker. Centring on the story of businessman El Hadji and the impotence that afflicts him on his marriage to a young third wife, Xala vividly captures the cultural and political upheaval of 1970s Senegal, while suggesting the radical potential of dissent, solidarity and collective action, embodied by El Hadji's student daughter Rama and the group of urban 'undesirables' who act as a kind of raw chorus to the affairs of the neocolonial elite. James S. Williams's lucid study traces Xala's difficult production history and analyses its daring combination of political and domestic drama, oral narrative, social realism, symbolism, satire, documentary, mysticism and Marxist analysis. Yet from its dazzling extended opening sequence of revolution as performance to its suspended climax of redemption through ritualised spitting, Xala presents a series of conceptual and formal challenges that resist a simple reading of the film as allegory. Highlighting often overlooked elements of Sembene's intricate, experimental film-making, including provocative shifts in mood and poetic, even subversively erotic, moments, Williams reveals Xala as a visionary work of both African cinema and Third Cinema that extended the parameters of postcolonial film practice and still resounds today with its searing inventive power.

Niiwam ; And, Taaw

Niiwam ; And, Taaw PDF Author: Ousmane Sembène
Publisher: New Africa Books
ISBN: 9780864861221
Category : African literature
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description


Ousmane Sembà ̈ne

Ousmane Sembà ̈ne PDF Author: Samba Gadjigo
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253004268
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Samba Gadjigo presents a unique personal portrait and intellectual history of novelist and filmmaker Ousmane Sembà ̈ne. Though Sembà ̈ne has persistently deflected attention away from his personality, his life, and his past, Gadjigo has had unprecedented access to the artist and his family. This book is the first comprehensive biography of Sembà ̈ne and contributes a critical appraisal of his life and art in the context of the political and social influences on his work. Beginning with Sembà ̈ne's life in Casamance, Senegal, and ending with his militant career as a dockworker in Marseilles, Gadjigo places Sembà ̈ne into the context of African colonial and postcolonial culture and charts his achievements in film and literature. This landmark book reveals the inner workings of one of Africa's most distinguished and controversial figures.

Tribal Scars and Other Stories

Tribal Scars and Other Stories PDF Author: Ousmane Sembène
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description


The Last of the Empire

The Last of the Empire PDF Author: Ousmane Sembène
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African fiction (English)
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description


Black Docker

Black Docker PDF Author: Ousmane Sembène
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Set in the 1950s, this book tells of Diaw Falla, a docker for whom work exists merely to finance his true obsession - his writing. As his novel nears completion, he meets Ginette Tontisanne whose good connections ensure he is published - but, to his dismay, under her name.

A Call to Action

A Call to Action PDF Author: Sheila Petty
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Sengalese director Ousmane Sembene has often been referred to as a pioneer of the sub-Saharan cinema. The political and aesthetic projects have deeply influenced the evolution of African filmmaking. This book explores Sembene's notion of a new Africa by examining the central issues of change, cultural alienation and economic dependence that infuse the director's cinematic and literary works. It also discusses his use of oral tradition and narration, the depiction of women's roles, the concept of nation, and how Sembene's novels and stories relate to his film work. -- Publisher description

God's Bits of Wood

God's Bits of Wood PDF Author: Ousmane Sembène
Publisher: Heinemann
ISBN: 9780435909598
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
"God's Bits of Wood is a fictionalized account of the Dakar-Niger train strikes which took in the 1940s. The novel looks at both the political and personal sacrifices the strikers and their families made. The political power is portrayed here as the strikers try to win back pensions, annual paid vacations, and family allowances from the Europeans. The novel can be seen as a shift of power between the African strikers and their European bosses. The Europeans have the political process and violence as a leverage of power, which they use both insistently and mindlessly. One of the European delegates for the railway company accidentally shoots young boys who are playing along the tracks. The delegate isn't charged with their murders. The Europeans also prevent the strikers and their families from having access to water. Yet the strikers also have the masses as their power. The strikers gain powerful allies in their own women. In the beginning of the novel, the women are not told the details of the strike, though they are asked to support their men. Only the small child, Ad'jibid'ji, shows any interest and insists that her grandfather take her to a meeting of the strikers. Yet as the novel continues, the women become more and more involved in the strike. This is because the strike has hit home to them in a literal way. There is no water nor food to eat. The women and children begin to starve. The women suffer in silence until they begin to fight back. Two of the more striking sequences in the novel are the siege between the women of N'Diayene and the policemen who have come to arrest Ramatoulaye, and leads to the burning down of the village, and the march the women go on to Dakar to protest their treatment and to support the strikers. The strike breaks down the barriers which cause inequality between men and women, black and white." -- from www.associatedcontent.com (Oct. 22, 2010).