March 25, 2005
Newsmakers
Filmmaker
in Focus
Samba
Gadjigo’s relationship with acclaimed African filmmaker
Ousmane Sembène and his award-winning film Moolaadé was
the subject of an article in the March 9 edition of the Daily Hampshire
Gazette. In “Senegalese Filmmaker Enlists MHC Professor as Agent,
Biographer,” staff writer Larry Parnass noted that Gadjigo is considered
Sembène’s official biographer and is the only person who
has been allowed to film Sembène at work. With Moolaadé,
which deals with conflicting traditions in an African village, Gadjigo
believes Sembène is poised for his greatest worldwide exposure
as a filmmaker to date. “Helping the world understand the literature
and film of Sembène is, Gadjigo says, his ‘lifetime project,’ ” Parnass
wrote. “Though Moolaadé seems destined to reach American
audiences, Sembène still struggles to reach Africans. Gadjigo
notes that more American movies dubbed in French are shown in Africa
than works by the continent's own filmmakers, including Sembène,” he
wrote. “ ‘We don't control our distribution channels. It
has not been shown in Senegal yet, where the producer is from,’ Gadjigo
said of Moolaadé. Sembène's mission, Gadjigo said, is to
make movies that can serve as a sort of ‘evening school’ for
people unable to obtain education other ways. ‘Its intended rule
is to educate, not just to entertain, following the Hollywood paradigm,’ he
said of Sembène's work. ‘He came to cinema to bridge the
gap between the African artist and the African audience.’ ” Gadjigo,
whose documentary The Making of Moolaadé was recently released,
has just finished the manuscript for a biography of Sembène.
Heroism’s Hues
The February 13 Chicago Tribune featured a book review by
associate professor of English Elizabeth Young of a new social
history of one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War.
The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History: Immigrants,
Women, and African Americans in the Civil War's Defining Battle
is by Margaret S. Creighton of Bates College.
Here’s a passage from Young's review, which was headlined “Expanding
History: An Intelligent, Provocative Book Offers a Different Perspective
on the Battle of Gettysburg”:
"Creighton’s project is a new popular history
of Gettysburg, ‘The
Colors of Courage,’ and her emphasis, as her subtitle outlines,
is on immigrants, women and blacks in the battle. Although
this is a huge task, Creighton’s volume is half the size
of the usual Gettysburg history. In 10 compact chapters she
focuses on
three groups: German-American soldiers in the Union Army’s
Eleventh Corps, white women living in Gettysburg, and Gettysburg's
African-American community. . . .
"So the approach is the close-up, but the goal is the big
picture. Creighton wants to overturn ‘the compartmentalization
of the past’ in the study of Gettysburg, whereby ‘here
is the story of white fighting; over there is the story of
Lincoln and “freedom”: and downtown, if you look hard
enough, you can find some women.’ In the introduction she
outlines the results of her approach: Her focus on immigrant
soldiers highlights
the Union Army as ‘a socially divided set of men beset by
internal battles’; her focus on women makes the battlefield’s
geography extend to ostensibly domestic, non-combat zones
and lengthens the combat’s duration to include the postwar
recovery period to which women workers were central; and
her focus on African-Americans
foregrounds the larger project of the struggle for black
freedom.
"The results are exciting, intelligent and provocative. While
preserving the specificity of military battle, Creighton
also decisively erodes the line between homefront and battlefront
for all three
groups. The book wears its research, both primary and secondary,
lightly, and its narrative is lively. Not surprisingly, given
Creighton’s
expertise in women's history, the chapter on white women's
responses to Confederate invasion is written with particular drama.
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