The Films of Ousmane Sembène: Discourse, Politics, and Culture By ...

certainly different areas of interest, all of which is reflected in their individual chapters and does not necessarily make for a smooth articulation of the different parts of an edited volume.

One publication devoted to Sembène’s work that stands out for its multifaceted approach and for how it incorporates Sembène, the man himself, into the analysis of his films is a special edition of a well-respected French review of cinema and television, CinémAction.¹⁹ This special edition of CinémAction, Sembène Ousmane (1985), edited by Daniel Serceau, examines aspects of the films from Borom Sarret (1962) to Ceddo (1976) and provides a compelling and well-thought-out collection of articles that analyzes the themes, style, and narrative techniques in Sembène’s cinema. This special issue of CinémAction designated Sembène as the father of African cinema, the one who had laid the foundation for a true African film language.

In the same way, Samba Gadjigo, Ralph H. Faulkingham, Thomas Cassirer, and Reinhard Sander edited Ousmane Sembène: Dialogues with Critics and Writers (1993), which emphasizes different aspects of Sembène’s films and writings, including politics and ideology (Frederick Ivor Case), aesthetics (Francoise Pfaff), and history (Mbye Cham). Petty edited A Call to Action: The Films of Ousmane Sembène (1996), a collection of articles written by several scholars. All the authors deal with specific aspects of Sembène’s films, such as the trajectory of African cinema (Roy Armes), Sembène as a militant artist (Philip Rosen), orality (Sada Niang), culture (Frederick Ivor Case), film language (Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike), and language use in Sembène’s cinema (Ann Elizabeth Willey). Willey explains Sembène’s turn to film as an alternative medium of communication in his endeavor to reach the majority of the Senegalese and African audiences.

In 2009, two years after Sembène’s death, Thierno Ibrahima Dia and Olivier Barlet—with the collaboration of Boniface Mongo-Mboussa and under the auspices of the journal Africultures—put together a compilation of articles as a tribute to Sembène: “Sembène Ousmane (1923–2007).”