#Alphonse Diatta

[whileiamdying]

Review: Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène on Criterion Blu-ray

Together, these films constitute a complex, interlocking portrait of Senegal’s past and present.

by Derek Smith May 30, 2024

Where Ousmane Sembène’s first two films, 1966’s Black Girl and 1968’s Mandabi, each focus on myriad struggles faced by an individual during Senegal’s early post-colonial years, his follow-up, Emitai, takes a more expansive view of the effects of colonialism two decades earlier. Centering on the defiance of a Diola tribe during World War II, 1971’s Emitai sacrifices none of the immediacy and urgency of Black Girl and Mandabi. Indeed, the film is perhaps an even more damning and incisive take-down of French colonial rule.

Painting a concise and pointed portrait of oppression in broad, revolutionary strokes, Emitai exposes the modern form of slavery that was France’s conscription of Senegalese men to fight on the deadliest frontlines of European battlegrounds. The film simultaneously details the meticulous taxation methods the French employed during this period, which, in attempting to seize a majority of tribes’ rice supply to feed their troops, is tantamount to starvation warfare.

Sembène, however, is less interested in the methodologies of the oppressor than in the unwavering, often silent protest of the Diola people, especially women, in the face of forces that threaten to wipe out the rituals and traditions that define them. In depicting the tribe’s refusal to turn over their rice not as a means to avoid starvation but as a matter of preserving the central value rice has in their cultural heritage, Sembène adds new dimensions to the conflict and complexity to the resistance of the villagers. The inevitable tragedy that concludes the film is quite the gut-punch, but in counterbalancing it with the rebellious enacting of funereal rites by the village women, Emitai becomes equal parts an indictment of colonial violence and a celebration of resilience and self-empowerment through revolutionary means.

In 1975’s Xala, Sembène presents a searing, often hilarious satire of the greed, corruption, and impotence of the new Senegalese governmental leadership following the eradication of French colonial rule. In the opening scene, we see government officials throw out the current French leaders and proudly proclaim that Africa will take back what’s theirs. This moment of triumph, which includes the removal of statues and busts of various French leaders, is swiftly undercut when the Senegalese officials each open a briefcase packed to the brim with 500 Franc bills.

This sequence, laden with anger and biting humor, is indicative of Xala’s absurdist, comedic tone. And as the film shifts its focus to one corrupt official in particular, El Hadji (Thierno Leye), who upon marrying his third wife is cursed with impotence, its satire becomes more metaphorical than direct. Sembène uses El Hadji’s gradual downfall to reflect the moral and political failings of the entire bourgeois class that came into power under the government of President Léopold Sédar Senghor. Through Sembène’s sly, cutting use of irony, claims of modernity and equality under a new “revolutionary socialism” are revealed to be empty promises, barely concealing the anti-feminist and pro-capitalist motives lurking behind them.

Sembène’s critique of a supposedly freed Senegal is intensely savage when it comes to unveiling the hypocrisies of a patriarchal leadership that betrayed the trust of the people it was supposed to aid and protect. Building to a conclusion that’s as funny and gratifying as it is pitiful and physically revolting, Xala captures the continuing repercussions of colonialism and how the forced delusions of a nation would leave its people perversely feeding on one another.

With 1977’s Ceddo, set in Senegal’s distant pre-colonial past, Sembène follows the conflicts between a growing Islamist faction of a once animistic tribe and the Ceddo, or outsiders, who refuse to convert and give up their animistic rituals and beliefs. This is certainly the most didactic entry in this set, but it’s enlivened by the sheer precision of its dialectical oppositions, through which the many hypocrisies of religious fundamentalism and colonization are laid bare.

Ceddo also reveals the complex intersectionality of religions and cultures that were at play in Senegal long before its colonization. Along with the Muslims, who were attempting to seize political power through religious conversions, white Christians and Catholics are present in the form of priests, missionaries, gun runners, and slave traders. The latter are silent through much of the film, but their presence—much like the white French adviser who remains in constant contact with the Senegalese politicians in Xala—speaks to the monumental power and influence whites held in Senegal even before colonialist rulers took over.

While the film’s subject is historical, Sembène draws clear parallels between the past and the post-colonial present of 1977, with the condescending paternalism of the Muslims, particularly the power-hungry imam played by Alioune Fall, mirroring that of the colonialist French. And rather than using traditional Senegalese music, Sembène employed Cameroonian musician Manu Dibango to compose a jazz-funk score that even further connects the events in Ceddo to the time of its release in the late ’70s. For whenever Sembène sets his film, he’s steadfast in his mission to draw meaningful correlations between Senegal’s past and present—each equally integral to the story of the country he loved and helped to define.

Image/Sound

All three transfers come from new 4K digital restorations and they, by and large, look terrific, with vibrant colors and rich details, especially in the costumes and extreme close-ups of faces. There are some shots where the grain is chunkier and the image isn’t quite as sharp, and the Ceddo transfer shows some noticeable signs of damage in several different scenes, but these are mostly minor, non-distracting imperfections. The mono audio track bears the limitations of the production conditions, so some of the dialogue in interior scenes is a bit echoey though still fairly clear. Meanwhile, the music comes through with a surprising robustness.

Extras

A new conversation between Mahen Bonetti, founder and executive director of the African Film Festival, and writer Amy Sall covers a lot of ground in 40 minutes. The two discuss Ousmane Sembène’s early career and discovery in the West before delving into his use of cinema as “a liberatory force” and his sly, caustic use of irony. The only other extra on the disc is a 1981 short documentary by Paulin Soumanou Vieyra in which Sembène espouses much of his philosophy of filmmaking, particularly the importance of understanding history and political complexities of the society one chooses to depict. (Amusingly, Sembène’s wife casually insults American moviegoers, as well as complains about her husband putting film before family.) The stunningly designed package also comes with a 26-page bound booklet containing an essay by film scholar Yasmina Rice, who touches on Sembène’s humor, feminism, and politically charged subjects, while forcefully pushing back against the notion that the director wasn’t much of a formalist.

Overall

These Ousmane Sembène films from 1970s brim with a revolutionary passion and, together, constitute a complex, interlocking portrait of Senegal’s past and present.

Score

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cast

Andongo Diabon, Michel Renaudeau, Robert Fontaine, Ousmane Camara, Ibou Camara, Abdoulaye Diallo, Alphonse Diatta, Pierre Blanchard, Cherif Tamba, Fode Cambay, Etienne Mané, Joseph Diatta, Dji Niassebaron , Antio Bassene, M’Bissine Thérèse Diop, Thierno Leye, Seune Samb, Younouss Seye, Miriam Niang, Fatim Diagne, Dieynaba Niang, Makhourédia Guèye, Tabara Ndiaye, Alioune Fall, Moustapha Yade, Mamadou N’Diaye Diagne, Nar Sene, Mamadou Dioum, Oumar Gueye.

[randomrichards]

EMITAI:

Women’s defiance

Against French colonizers

To preserve their rice

[byneddiedingo]

Emitaï (Ousmane Sembene, 1971)

Cast: Andongo Diabon, Robert Fontaine, Michel Renaudeau, Osmane Camara, Ibou Camara, Alphonse Diatta, Pierre Blanchard. Screenplay: Ousmane Sembene. Cinematography: Georges Caristan, Michel Renaudeau. Film editing: Gilbert Kikouïne. 

I grew up on Hollywood films, which were all that were available in the small town where I lived. (This was before cable TV, not to mention streaming.) They made me love movies, but they also gave me a limited awareness of what film could do. So when foreign films finally became part of my movie-watching life, I was astonished at how little I knew about what cinema could be, but also about how limited my experience of human behavior was. The people in the French and Italian and Swedish films I saw didn't behave the way people in American movies did and the way the filmmakers told their stories was somehow different from the way Hollywood did. There were fewer happy endings and predictable plot turns. And when I moved beyond European films into the work of Asian directors, there was still more culture shock coming. But as my cinematic horizons widened, and I came to embrace Satyajit Ray along with Nicholas Ray, to rank Ozu and Renoir among my favorite directors alongside Hitchcock and Hawks, there still remained (and remains) an ignorance of what's called "world cinema," the work of filmmakers outside the developed countries of Europe and Asia. I still approach these movies with a bit of trepidation, uncertain whether the differences between the cultures they show and my own will stymie my understanding and appreciation of their work. So I'm working my way through the Criterion Channel's collection of the films of Ousmane Sembene with a kind of divided awareness. I have to remind myself that these movies weren't made for me, but for an African audience. There's a kind of urgency about his films that's more vital for the intended audience than it is for me. Emitaï is set in Senegal during World War II, when the French drafted the native people of their colonies into the fight. It takes place in a village that resents having its young men taken away and its rice crop collected as taxation. But there's no resisting the superior arms of the French authorities, and the film evokes the impotence and frustration of the villagers. The elders decide to call on their gods, which we actually see in a fantasy sequence, but they get no help. Sembene depicts the latent strength of the tribe, especially its women, but this conflict of cultures can only end tragically. Sometimes, Sembene's storytelling relies on blatantly expository dialogue and didactic speeches that verge on propaganda, but this is anything but naïve filmmaking. Emitaï is a subtle and poignant depiction of the destructive absurdity of colonialism.  

[dweemeister]

Emitaï (1971, Senegal)

In 1963, Borom Sarret became the first African film to be directed a black African. I imagine many people reading that last sentence are thinking to themselves, “what took so long?” Simple: colonial governments forbade film productions by native Africans. With Senegal becoming independent from France in 1960, this allowed Ousmane Sembène to be the first black African director on a short (Borom Sarret) and a feature-length film (1966’s Black Girl). Before Borom Sarret, Sembène was primarily an author residing in France (he smuggled himself to Paris in 1947) – his literary works commented on colonialism, racism, identity, and tribal relations. Around 1960, Sembène found himself fascinated with films and wished to experiment in how to express his ideas through a visual medium. Studying filmmaking for a year in Moscow gave him the skill needed to return to Senegal, intent on crafting films for his fellow Senegalese (Senegal recorded a 51.9% literacy rate in 2017, so Sembène’s writing was inaccessible to many), to help them see and understand the lives and cultures similar or dissimilar to their own.

Sembène, born to a Lebou family among fellow tribespersons, turns his focus to the Diola – an ethnic minority also known as Jola – people for Emitaï (sometimes translated to “God of Thunder”, but it refers to a supreme, remote being). The Diola have a language quite different from Wolof, Senegal’s lingua franca, and the Diola language has several dialects. While directing Emitaï, Sembène learned the specific dialect used by the villagers used as extras in this film. That local dialect is the language used in the film, not Wolof as many websites and film databases online claim. Here, we learn how – through the Diola’s culture – they comprehend and react to the dilemma they contend with in this film. Soon enough, the audience learns of the spiritual richness of the tribe depicted and witnesses the French characters’ contempt towards the Diola’s way of life. Emitaï is a remarkable film, paced to the tempo of life in a rural village, and deeply attuned to storytelling traditions not often honored in film.

Somewhere in the Casamance region of Senegal, black Vichy French soldiers are abducting several Diola tribesman, forcibly conscripting them into service. Vichy France fought with the Axis powers, as it was a puppet state of Nazi Germany. Back in the village, the tribal elders are discussing if they should respond, given that these abductions are interfering with the rice harvest. No action is taken and the film progresses one year. It is the summer of 1944. French colonial officers – Robert Fontaine (“Monsieur” in Black Girl) as the Commandant, Michel Remaudeau the Lieutenant (as well as cinematographer), Pierre Blanchard the Colonel – follow orders to enforce a severe rice tax on tribal villages. They dispatch a detachment of black troops to that Diola village to levy said tax (this detachment includes the men abducted the prior year). As the conscripts round up the locals, the tribal leaders consult their animistic gods and the women rebel against the French officers and the tribesmen-turned-soldiers.

Emitaï tells its story at its own pace. The camera is kept apart from tribespersons and French soldiers alike, keeping them in a full or medium shot, rarely employing close-ups. The surrounding nature is depicted to suggest the villagers’ relationship with nature. Winds sigh through the trees and tall grasses, the nearby marshes (maybe unclaimed by agriculture) form the background for the rice harvesting scenes, and we hear nothing but the sloshes of water during a boating scene. Conversations between individuals, a group, or antagonistic groups develop, intensify, and subside without a cut taking the viewer to someplace else. The conversations are self-contained within the seconds or minutes they occur between characters or groups; the effectiveness of these scene is thanks to the fact that the characters believably are without certain knowledge about what is happening in other parts of the village. There are no knowing winks to others (or the audience), no clever asides that would feel inappropriate in a tale of colonial oppression. Yet, Sembène’s film never putters in philosophical circles nor feels plodding. Less patient filmmakers or those who too stubbornly subscribe to postmodernism might feel unsettled here, wishing to whisk the audience from a scene before a Major Plot Reveal (this might be culturally compatible with Sembène’s or the Diola’s understanding of how they share stories) with their itchy fingers. Sembène uses this time to help viewers learn about the Diola. Whether one might be a non-Diola from Senegal or from the other side of the Earth, we learn basic aspects about Diola culture that amplifies how we feel when we see the villagers being rounded up and young, able-bodied men who just happened to evade French capture taking arms against African-wielded, European-engineered munitions.

The Diola worship and fear their gods, and the rice they harvest is not only for themselves, but used as an offering to their gods. And as the tribal elders communicate with the gods, the quality of their rice harvest may impact how their gods converse with them – there is one fantastical sequence where this occurs. Some viewers might see the dialogue with the gods as a delusion, an unnecessary detour in an allegedly straightforward colonizer-versus-colonized narrative. But recall that Sembène wanted to make films so that his fellow Senegalese – no matter their ethnicity, linguistic skills, or religion – could empathize or see their histories onscreen. The Diola believe in these animistic gods to keep their families and villages at peace (although – though not portrayed in the film – some Christian and Islamic influences have been introduced), to guide them when an enemy is bearing down on them. Who are we to say they are wrong for doing so? Sembène, who also wrote the screenplay, may not have been Diola himself, but he clearly showed enough respect and attention to them that he would allow their gods have a presence in Emitaï. A Diola did not write Emitaï, but those moments with the gods – a daring decision that I am unaware has any such parallels in a colonizer-versus-colonized film – and the inclusion of a few funeral ceremony scenes complement the “voice” of the Diola. Traditions of African folk stories and religions are prevalent in how Emitaï is shot and how its story unfolds – including, as a pervasive convention in these traditions, a tree that connects humans to a spiritual plane.

The tribal leaders in Emitaï appear to be all men. The women of the village are mostly seen as tending to the children, as well as performing the bulk of the rice harvest. They are the first to be detained by the forcibly conscripted soldiers, but not in a position of distress. After a skirmish between some of the young, uncaptured men and the French forces, the women arrange an impromptu funeral procession for one of the fallen tribal leaders. They sing what sound like celebratory, not mournful, songs – perhaps for a life well lived, bravery in defending the Diola way of life. What should be uncontroversial becomes rebellion. With forcible conscription may result in further encroachments on Diola culture. Already their sacred harvest is disrupted, so what might be next? In Black Girl, Sembène’s feminist arguments circulated around personal discontent and racial subjugation. Though not nearly as intimately portrayed here, Emitaï expands on those themes – showing us the solidarity of the oppressed women. None of the black characters in Emitaï are professional actors and none of the women are given character names. Nameless though they may be (perhaps this was an attempt to “universalize” the film to the tribal peoples of Senegal), the village’s women seldom appear helpless as the conscripted soldiers force them into position by the sides of their rifles or the French officers barking at them about the location of hidden rice. Unarmed and forced to sit in the baking sun, they are stronger that anyone might guess.

Their understanding of “the white man’s war” is limited and the Diola feel little responsibility in helping the French officers fight it. A message delivered in the final minutes reveals that Marshal Philippe Pétain (Vichy France’s leader) has been deposed by Charles de Gaulle, meaning that the Allies have liberated France from the Axis (Sembène – who himself was drafted into France’s colonial infantry and later served among the Free French Forces – makes a cameo appearance here as the soldier ridiculing de Gaulle for being ranked lower than Pétain). Leadership has changed thousands of miles away, but the situation for all the native Africans – soldiers and civilians alike – is unchanged. Allied victory has brought not liberation, but a new poster of some mustachioed, uptight Frenchman who just happens to now be in charge. The casual cruelty and cultural ignorance on display by the French – as they complain of the backwardness of where they are stationed and how the most consequential decisions are being made by military bureaucracy – is rather restrained. Though it would be difficult to recall any nobility among the French soldiers, they do possess a cartoonish, outward malice. Sembène castigates the French characters and colonialism not through soliloquies, but their escalations and actions. Emitaï’s most violent moment is never shown on-camera, yet it was enough to provoke French censors to scrub the scene (among others). Ironically, despite Senegal’s independence from France eleven years prior, this meant the film could not be released in its entirety in France or French-speaking Africa until 1976 – five years after its debut at the Moscow International Film Festival.

Nor did Sembène catch a break from Senegalese censors. President Léopold Senghor’s regime censored Sembène’s films regularly: Sembène’s next feature, Xala (1975), excoriated colonialist institutions that remained in Senegal post-independence and its lead actor was chosen partly due to his resemblance to President Senghor (it doesn’t help that the plot revolves around the lead character looking for a cure for his sudden impotence). In the case of Emitaï, the reasons are not readily available, but the censorship most likely was targeted towards how the forcibly conscripted soldiers are depicted. The dynamic that the Senegalese censors singled out in Emitaï would be multiplied and inflamed by Sembène’s Ceddo (1977) – that film is set shortly after France establishes a colonial government in Senegal; there, Sembène draws parallels between that film’s tribal leaders and future Africans who would conspire with European slave traders (the Senegalese government’s perceptions that the film criticized Senegal’s political leadership and bourgeoisie was accurate, but that is a story to be told when I review Ceddo).

An unofficial sequel to Emitaï was released in 1988, Camp de Thiaroye. That film touched upon many of the themes Sembène remarks upon in Emitaï: the destruction of identity among African soldiers in the French military, violence in the name of colonialism, and structures of racial supremacy. It, too, was censored in France and Senegal upon release. But by Emitaï, Sembène’s cinematic style – freed from the constraints of speech and linguistic barriers – had become crystallized. Like his prior works, Emitaï is uncompromising in its depiction of human cruelty and how that is manifested in colonial or neocolonial paradigms. He criticizes so effectively by juxtaposing behavior, not through rhetoric – it matters not if the oppressor is white (as they almost always are in his films) or black. Away from urban settings, his pacing adapts to the surrounding environment, the slow and seasonal life of the Diola village. Many who see Emitaï will not recognize much of the life and culture of the Diola. It is a testament to Sembène that he makes this biting film so empathic and compelling.

My rating: 9/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.