FilmScene Presents: A Tribute to Ousmane Sembène
"Whether it's DeMille, Hitchcock, the Senegalese filmmaker Sembène…we're all walking in their footsteps every day." -Martin Scorsese
Join us for a special double feature honoring Ousmane Sembène, widely considered the father of African cinema and one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. First is SEMBENE!, which tells his monumental story. Co-director Jason Silverman will join us for a live Q&A via Skype following the screening. After the Q&A, we'll screen a stunning new restoration of Sembène's seminal BLACK GIRL (approximate start time of 9pm).
FREE Admission: FilmScene members, Mission Creek Festival passholders, and students! Members may reserve tickets online. MCF passholders and students, simply show your pass or student ID at the box office for free admission. Seating is limited and is first-come, first-served. Doors open at 6pm. Arrive early and enjoy drink and concession specials while you wait.
General public tickets are $12 and available now online or at the box office. A purchased ticket guarantees your seat.
SEMBENE!
Dirs. Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman | 2015 | 87 mins.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/GHxsffWvi3s
Official Selection- Sundance Film Festival & Cannes Film Festival
In 1952, Ousmane Sembéne, a dockworker and fifth-grade dropout from Senegal, began dreaming an impossible dream: to become the storyteller for a new Africa. SEMBENE! tells the unbelievable true story of the "father of African cinema," the self-taught novelist and filmmaker who fought, against enormous odds, a monumental, 50-year-long battle to give African stories to Africans. SEMBENE! is told through the experiences of the man who knew him best, colleague and biographer Samba Gadjigo, using rare archival footage and more than 100 hours of exclusive materials. A true-life epic that follows an ordinary man who transforms himself into a fearless spokesperson for the marginalized, becoming a hero to millions. After a startling fall from grace, can Sembéne reinvent himself once more?
DIALOGUE: Post-screening Q&A via Skype with co-writer/producer/director Jason Silverman, who is also Cinematheque Director at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe.
BLACK GIRL
Dir. Ousmane Sembène | 1966 | 65 mins. | New Restoration!
"An astonishing movie." -Martin Scorsese
"For all the simplicity of the materials and the fablelike aspects of the story, a complex and passionate intelligence is shaping the meaning in every scene." -Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Ousmane Sembène's feature debut is one of the most important films ever made about race. Senegalese housemaid Diouana (Diop) is brought to France by the white family she works for, finding herself isolated in an unfamiliar country and trapped in a life of domestic servitude, a situation that the dignified Diouana refuses to accept. Both a landmark of world cinema and a devastating indictment of colonialism's tragic legacy, BLACK GIRL is the first African film to receive international acclaim; Martin Scorsese called it "an astonishing movie--so ferocious, so haunting, and so unlike anything we'd ever seen." Sembène's luminous black and white images have a direct expressive power, and they gleam anew in this restoration. (BAM, Brooklyn Academy of Music).
Restored by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project in collaboration with the Sembene Estate, Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, Eclair laboratories, and Centre National de Cinématographie. Restoration carried out at Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory. A Janus Films release.