|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
At 11:00 a.m. sharp, I walked up the stairs into his office and introduced myself to the secretary. After she announced me, I went into his private office. The first thing I noticed was that the walls were crowded with awards and certificates, and Sembène himself now dressed casually in a t-shirt that said “Screen Griot.” We shook hands and, frankly, Sembène did not seem too inviting. We exchanged obligatory salutations for a while, and then I gave him his gift. He beamed—then everything changed. That gift, the special bottle from Burkina Faso, opened a door for me in a way I still do not quite understand but for which I am eternally grateful. When I told Sembène about the other bottle I had intended to give him, he responded in a way that has become more and more charged with meaning for me in the years since that initial encounter. About the other bottle he said simply, “That one was for the ancestors.”
I have thought a lot about this initial encounter and the reasons why Sembène agreed to let me interview him. Was it the fact that I was unthreatening—a young adult scholar and really no more than an admiring consumer of his works? Perhaps it was that we shared similar political views or ideas about the major political issues in Senegal and Africa? Or was it quite simply the magic of the appropriate gift, in this case the ginger drink, brought all the way from a place Sembène admired? Regardless of the reason, I was fortunate to meet Sembène and, after my initial interview with him, was privileged to maintain an e-mail correspondence with him until a few months before he died in 2007.
I had been viewing Sembène’s films for several years before I actually met him. Mostly, I was intrigued with the films for their boldness and artistry. But, I must admit, I also viewed the films, in my early years as a Senegalese immigrant in the United States, because they figuratively brought me home when I was missing the warmth and social life of Senegal. In the years after I met Sembène, my screenings of his films became far more intentional. Now I wanted to understand how Sembène—the man and no longer an abstraction—viewed the people of Senegal