Ousmane Sembène

“For me, the cinema is the best evening school. It not only enables me to do more and to go further than literature, but it also lets people speak in their own language—Wolof in this case. [...] We are doing something here that goes beyond our imagination.” (Ousmane Sembène, 1973 in Ousmane Sembène: Interviews)

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"At the time, there was a movie theatre, we had a film club, and I was one of the film club’s organizers. And of course we would invite our great filmmakers. The finest at the time were Sembène, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, Ababacar Samb-Makharam, Momar Thiam. Whenever Sembène came by, he would say, I'm a novelist, but I wanted to make films because people do not read and I wanted to communicate with them in a language they understand." (Ben Diogoye Béye in conversation with Ibrahima Wane on the foundation of the journal Kaddu, Dakar 2017) 

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Ousmane Sémbène in the editing room ..

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in Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, The Making of Ceddo, Senegal 1981, 25’.