After the unquestionable domination of Black Panther, now may be a great time to see Sembene!, not because it is a great documentary, but it gives us a taste of African films made by a pioneering African filmmaker and may create a demand to make Ousmane Sembene’s films more readily available to film lovers. I love foreign films, but even I’m largely ignorant of his films other than Black Girl because they are not frequently discussed or casually available for home viewings. Even the most ardent filmgoer such as myself doesn’t know about when the next film festival is and even if I did, I may not be able to take the time off or have the bandwith to consume all the content and function as a person with a day job.
Sembene! is a documentary that is part elegy for, part fangirling over and part biography of Ousmane Sembene, Senegalese author and filmmaker. I usually have a problem with someone so close to the subject making the documentary, but it helps that Samba Gadjigo is an academic and well versed in introducing audiences to his idol. It also does not hurt that all the sentiments expressed by Gadjigo and Sembene are completely relatable. We are hungry for movies about and made by people who are underrepresented in the cultural landscape. Before 1960, the French did not permit Africans to make films so underrepresentation is not accident, but an act of conscious hijacking of the imagination. Create a world where your interior life can only fantasize about the majority that you cannot be a part of, and your waking world will leave you feeling unseen and unheard. I would love to know if James Baldwin and Sembene ever crossed paths because they seem to be concerned with same violent hijacking of imagination of black people and understand that an important aspect of resistance is art.
Sembene! is not exactly chronological, which is something that I do not enjoy. It starts with Gadjigo returning to Galle Ceddo, Sembene’s home, after his idol died. Then the documentary tries to adhere to a chronological biography of his life, but after it passes the existence of his son, it later backtracks and focuses on the son’s perspective of his father. When it seems like we are nearing the end of his film career, and there is still a lot of time left in the film, I was a little alarmed, but the film returns to showing Gadjigo’s perspective of his initial encounters with Sembene and his efforts to introduce his favorite filmmaker to American audiences. The documentary chronicles their relationship, and Gadjigo becomes his voice by translating. This development seems to invigorate Sembene as he returns to filmmaking after years of his work being banned in his home country and his colonialist country, France.
Sembene! is not just a glowing biography. It briefly alludes to his inadequacies as a father and significant other because he prioritizes his work over his relationships. He also exploits younger African filmmakers by taking their ideas and money that was supposed to go to them in order to make his own films. Sembene’s outrage at political injustice fails to translate into his own tyranny at home. Even the one exploited, Mbissine Therese Diop, seems to have forgiven this betrayal after Sembene’s death.
What struck me about the titular historical figure was his eagerness to tackle misogynoir rooted in cultural practices such as female circumcision. Black men eager to advocate for black women as much as they want to tell their own stories is not a prevalent phenomenon and makes Sembene a pioneer ahead of his time even today. His ability to see and depict black women as fully human with rich interior lives independent from those who surround them is one of the things that I admired in Black Girl.
Sembene! may have structural flaws, but they do not hurt the overall enjoyment of the film and can be excused as an excess of love and devotion, not pretentious or lack of skill in conveying a message. The documentary definitely made me want to actively find and watch his films, but I could only find a few on Netflix so I may be left wanting. I’m sure that Gadjigo is working to rectify this problem.