Ousmane Sembène (The Greatest Author Of Africa) “The Father Of African Cinema” 🇸🇳.

“At age forty, when I traveled around Africa and in the Congo during the Lumumba’s time, I realized the potential impact of cinema. Cinema is like an ongoing political rally with the audience. You have Catholics, Muslims, Gaullists, Communists, etc. If the film is good, each sees what they want. So, I was driven to film as a more effective tool for my activism.”

Those were his words to a younger audience in Dakar. Born in Ziguinchor, Casamance, Sembène was a fisherman’s son with a colorful childhood. He was exposed to Serer religion at a very young age and crowned as a cult servant, a role he would not take too seriously and was known for drinking the offerings made to the ancestors.

At age 21, the world was in turmoil, and Sembène was drafted into the Senegalese Tirailleurs and later served along with the Free French Forces. Then, in 1947, he returned home. However, it was a home unlike his childhood, and he wanted to change it. He would participate in many strikes, and the most noticeable one won his attention, in which he would later base his seminal novel, God’s Bits of Wood (1960).