| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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written about Sembène’s novels and films, very few are devoted exclusively to the study of his films.
To explain how this volume is situated within the wider literature on African cinema and on Sembène more specifically, I devote the remainder of the chapter to a review of the major works of relevance. In 1996, after Sembène had completed eleven of his thirteen films, three important edited volumes were published: Imruh Bakari and Mbye Cham’s African Experiences of Cinema, Sada Niang’s Littérature et cinéma en Afrique francophone: Ousmane Sembène et Assia Djebar, and Sheila Petty’s A Call to Action: The Films of Ousmane Sembene (discussed later).18 Bakari and Cham’s African Experiences of Cinema (1996) is a comprehensive study of the history and trajectory of African cinema. Although it is concerned with African cinema in general, it includes a number of chapters focusing primarily on aspects of Sembène’s films, such as the chapter that looks at history by Mamadou Diouf, who “trace[d] the vicissitudes of the imagination and the production of a historical memory” in his reading of Ousmane Sembène’s Ceddo and Djibril Diop Mamberty’s Hyenas; other chapters discuss the representation of women (Sheila Petty) and, to a lesser extent, eroticism in sub-Saharan African films (Francoise Pfaff). Niang’s edited volume comprises chapters that focus on central themes in the cinema and literature of Sembène and Assia Djebar. Bernard Moitt explored race and resistance in Camp de Thiaroye as well as archival documentation of the story. Frederick Ivor Case examined aesthetics by focusing on the ideological use of language in Sembene and Djebar’s written works. As for Anne Dominique Curtius and Joseph Paré, they examined the film and novel versions of Manda bi. Samba Gadjigo’s discussion revolves around Sembène’s take on both cinema and literature, two art forms in which his name came to be deeply associated with Africa. Alioune Tine’s article examines diglossia in Sembène’s written works, whereas Sada Niang compared and contrasted literary and cinema productions of Sembène and Djebar.