Sub-Saharan African Cinemaand Ousmane Sembene’s Xala

Lecture 16

Senegal

West Africa

Senegal

Western Images of Africa?

Western Images of Africa

• The representational norm “is to use the selectively photographed or fictionally created exotica of Africa to create sensation, to titillate the imagination, to transport the…consumer to the wild, weird, and either wonderful or terrifying Africa.” (from Africa on Film and Videotape)

Effects of Representation?• Ukadike: “The images the filmmakers projected of Africa was

to have a lasting effect, haunting not only the black people of Africa, but also all blacks in the diaspora. Perhaps there is no country that exhibits motion pictures in which audiences have not seen a film of Hollywood origin, or a Hollywood-inspired film, that caricatures the African as a “savage” or a jungle “cannibal,” or that depicts the African-American as as second class citizen who is inferior to his white American counterpart. ‘Indeed,’ Robert Stam and Louise Spence write, ‘many of the misconceptions concerning Third World peoples derive from the the long parade [in films] of lazy Mexicans, shifty Arabs, savage Africans and exotic Asiatics.”

Ex: British Colonial Film Unit, 1939-1955

• Established under British Ministry of Information

• Established to make propaganda films that would encourage African support for the war effort

• Made over 200 short films• After the war, the films made were instructional

films meant for an African audience

• Mister English at Home (1940)• Daybreak at Udi (1949)

Xala (Ousmane Sembene, 1974)

• Shaped by Frantz Fanon theoretical framework

• Based on a novel by Sembene, written in French

• Aimed at a Senegalese audience• Censored by the Senegalese government

Frantz Fanon, 1925-1961

Négritude, 1930s

• Artistic and intellectual movement initiated by Francophone Black intellectuals and artists

• Begins in France to combat French domination• Includes Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal),

poet Aimé Césaire (Martinique), Léon Damas (French Guiana)

• Self-affirmation of blackness, “the black world”

Fanon on Post-independence

• Wretched of the Earth (1961)– Takes aim at the national bourgeoisie (comprador

class)

Allegory in Xala

• Setting of the film:?• El Hadji:?• Dupont-Durand: ?• President of the Chamber of Commerce: ?• Gorgui and company:?• Rama: ?• Awa: ?• Oumi: ?• Ngone: ?• El Hadji’s impotence: ?

Allegory in Xala• Setting of the film: Dakar-Africa• Bust of Marianne: symbol of nation, allegory of Liberty and

Reason• El Hadji: national bourgeoisie• Dupont-Durand: Jean Collin-Post-independence European control• President of the Chamber of Commerce: Senghor-head of

government• Gorgui and company: lumpenproletariat-”the people”• Rama: Pan-Africanism-feminist critique of tradition• Awa: tradition • Oumi: Westernization-feminist critique• Ngone and company: empty tradition• El Hadji’s impotence: state impotence

On Xala

• Novel vs. Film?• Film’s audience• Musical score• State censorship

Musical score has its origins in the diegesis

State Censorship

• 10 cuts– Removal of the bust of Marianne, symbol of the French

Republic– Frenchman ordering police to push back crowd– Attaché cases– Frenchman conducting raid on beggars– El Hadji’s statement to the Chamber before his removal– Gorgui lecturing Awa about the life of prisoners– Film’s ending

Clips from El Hadji’s address to the chamber

Clip of the Final Sequence of Xala

Douta Seck (plays Gorgui)