You only need to watch 1966’s domestic-maid exposé Black Girl or 2004’s FGM polemic Moolaadé to see that Ousmane Sembène’s iconoclastic power went undimmed throughout a 40-year directing career. This rather respectful documentary, co-directed and narrated by the director’s amanuensis, Samba Gadjigo – a part, like those earlier two films, of a new national touring programme of the man’s work – majors in the Senegalese’s trailblazing; most notably the fact that he was responsible for the first film shot by a black African. (Black Africans were banned from film-making in French colonies.) It certainly makes an easy enough case for him as directorial griot, fearlessly telling truth to power. But legacy trumps intensive scrutiny. Contradictions – such as how a former Marseille dockworker whose sworn aim was to represent his people later coped with his isolating political influence – are left by the wayside. One anecdote about stealing the funding for his 1988 film about the Thiaroye massacre from two younger film-makers is a glimpse of ruthless ego. We need to know more about it, and, judging from the impressive array of mouth furniture on display, about Sembène’s career manqué as African pipe smoker of the year, too.
