Ousmane Sembene: Reflections of Africa

The veteran Senegalese film-maker tells Alexander Carnwath why, for him, film-making is about militancy more than business

The "Father of African Cinema" was a winner at last year's Cannes Festival. But it's speaking to an evolving African society that matters to the veteran Senegalese film-maker Ousmane Sembene.

In 40 years of making films about African society, the 82-year-old director has never lacked targets for his trademark satire. But he has always reserved special ridicule for the continent's moneyed elite. In his 1975 film Xala, he has them washing their Mercedes in mineral water.

With this in mind, it's hard not to be amused by the setting that he has chosen for his own daily life. His first-floor office is in a chaotic building in the centre of Dakar, looking out onto one of the city's most congested streets. Street-sellers offer nuts and biscuits to passers-by, traffic is at a stand-still, horns sound, arms gesture out of open car-windows. The noise and fumes waft up to us through the window, open to allow some relief from the Dakar heat. Ever the cineaste, you feel, Sembene could hardly have created a more studied set-piece of a man immersed in African life.

But then self-consciousness has never been Sembene's style, more a stubborn independence, as magnificent as it is bloody-minded. A former author, brought up in southern Senegal, he turned to cinema as a way of speaking to his compatriots. "I create to talk to my people, my country. The priority is that my people can understand me." He may not care much how his films are received in the Western world, but he is convinced that they have a role to play in African development: "Africa needs to see it's own reflection. A society progresses by asking questions of itself so I want to be an artist who questions his people."

Since this questioning has led him to portray African leaders in a less than flattering light, it's not surprising that he has had problems getting his films shown in Africa. Xala had 12 cuts before being passed for showing in Dakar, his film Ceddo was banned outright for many years. The scarcity of cinemas in West Africa also causes obvious difficulties, so Sembene takes the cinema to the audience. He has organised truck tours to bring his films to villages throughout West Africa, with discussions following each showing. Mooladé, his most recent film, has gone out to villages in Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau. "For me, film-making is not about business," he says, "It's about militancy."

It's also about community. Sembene's enthusiasm for open-air screenings and discussions, rather than the anonymity of the cinema experience, reflects the importance of involving the audience in his work. This has led some critics to relate his cinema to the African oral tradition of griotism, in which communities would gather to hear their stories performed. But when I suggest this to him, Sembene meets the idea with exasperation. "Griotism was a historical era," he protests. "It's like the minstrels in England. The African mustn't feel himself enclosed by that, saying we were like that. The Africa of the past won't come back."

If Sembene's films are "African" then, it's because they reflect the evolution of African identity and not because they indulge in quaint cultural nostalgia. "Either the African adopts to his time, his era, or he doesn't. There's nothing else," he says, in protest at the theorising his work attracts from Western critics. Point made, he becomes more expansive on the contradictions that face African society and that feed into his films. He talks of the clash in values between Senegal's Western-educated politicians and the country's Arab-educated spiritual leaders, each vying to direct the country towards a particular future. He talks of the impact of the private radio stations that criss-cross West Africa, communicating to huge audiences in African languages and causing anxiety amongst the Francophone elite. And he talks of the influence of Western films and soap operas, a form of cultural colonialism which skews African priorities. "All of these conflicts bring Africa to a moment of great responsibility. It's a crossroads, a moment of choice between certain values. But as an artist, my problem is to see these contradictions and to lay them before my society."

An Ousmane Sembene retrospective begins at the NFT on 1 June. 'Moolade' will be shown from 3 to 16 June