THOMAS JACOB Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene will be at MHC May 7 and 8 to screen his films and discuss new directions in his cinema.

by Katherine Axt '01

It's not often that the opportunity comes along to see evocative international films and meet with their maker during the same evening, but that's what lies in store for the MHC community during the early days of May. Prominent Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene will be on campus to screen his films and discuss the new directions his cinema is taking. One of Sembene's early films, Black Girl (1966), will be shown Monday, May 7, at 8 pm in Gamble Auditorium, and the following evening, May 8, his most recent film, Faat Kine (2000), will be screened, also at 8 pm in Gamble. Sembene will introduce both films and will be available after the screenings to answer questions and interact with students, faculty, and the Five College community. Sembene's visit is sponsored by the Film Studies Program, the African and African American Studies Programs, the French department, the politics department, and the offices of the dean of the College and dean of the faculty.

Black Girl is the story of a Senegalese girl hired as a maid in Dakar and transformed into a slave when she goes to France with the family. The film ends tragically with her suicide, which is a symbol of her powerlessness and exploitation, according to Samba Gadjigo, MHC associate professor of French, who helped bring Sembene to campus. Faat Kine explores three generations of Senegalese women: Kine's mother, a traditional woman resigned to the patriarchal forces of her society; Faat Kine, who is torn between her desires for modernity and her obligations to tradition; and Kine's daughter, the African woman of tomorrow.

"Although women still have a lot of struggles and obstacles facing them, Faat Kine shows Senegalese women taking back power. It is interesting to view Sembene's vision of African women in the context of the change in perspective that has happened since the 1960s," said Gadjigo, who has spent the last five years writing Sembene's biography and recently returned from the Fespaco/Pan-African Film Festival in Ouagadougou, Republic of Burkina Faso in West Africa.

Since money is scarce, African cinema cannot compete with the mass production of Hollywood, according to Gadjigo. Instead, African filmmakers devote themselves to educating the African people. Sembene uses film as a way of telling stories in the tradition of the African griot, a position similar to the medieval minstrel. Although Africa's past informs his films, Sembene's cinema is above all a cinema of action for positive change.