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Martin Scorcese namechecks Ousmane Sembene

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Martin Scorcese namechecks Ousmane Sembene

By
Sean Jacobs

Scorcese not only restores prints of African cinema classics, he also counts Ousmane Sembene as one of cinema's greatest directors.

Sembene on set. Image Credit: Kino Lorber

The legendary American film director, Martin Scorsese, is emerging as some kind of patron for African film in the United States. In 2008, Scorcese hosted a screening of a restored print of “Harvest 3000 Years,” the director Haile Gerima’s 1975 epic film at the Tribeca Film Festival. Gerima had shot the film over two weeks while the Ethiopian Revolution was unfolding. Scorcese’s World Cinema Foundation had funded the restoration of the original print.  The board members of the World Cinema Foundation include fellow directors Abderrahmane Sissako, Fatih Akin and Abbas Kiarostami, among others, and you can watch some of the restored films via the site.

In the Tribeca Film Festival program, Scorcese wrote about “Harvest 3000 Years,” that “…[a] sense of monumental effort pervades every frame of ‘Harvest 3000 Years. It has a particular kind of urgency which few pictures possess. This is the story of an entire people, and its collective longing for justice and good faith. An epic, not in scale but in emotional and political scope.”

Last week, Scorcese was lending his celebrity and imprint to promoting African cinema again. Scorcese was being honored by the who was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2010 Golden Globes Awards.  During his acceptance speech Scorcese went further. This time, he did not just endorse an African film; he paid homage to an African filmmaker, the great Ousmame Sembene as one of his film ancestors:  As he told his audience, “… none of us would be here without the people who come before us. Whether it is De Mille, Hitchcock or the Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene, Satyajit Ray …We all walking in their footsteps all of us …”

Mainstream American film culture is so insular (except when it comes to European cinema) that you’re shocked when Scorsese  does what he does and acknowledge the place and contributions of African cinema. It was also nice to see it being done at a stuffy event like the Golden Globes.

Update: Later, Scorcese has also name-checked Gadalla Gubara, Souleymane Cisse, Med Hondo,  Oumaru Ganda, and Djibril Diop Mambety, and has spoken about attending Fespaco. the famed film festival in Burkina Faso.

So, respect.

Further Reading

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Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

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An annual awakening

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