2023 edition

BY PAULIN SOUMANOU VIEYRA, 1954

The nostalgia of an African student in Paris for Africa.

PAULIN SOUMANOU VIEYRA (1925-1987) :

Paulin Soumanou Vieyra is considered the precursor of African cinema. Director, critic, writer and historian, he is credited with some thirty documentaries and a single feature film, “En résidence surveillée” (“Under house arrest”). The first African to graduate from the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques (IDHEC), now the FEMIS, he shot Afrique-sur-Seine in 1955, a cult film that marked the beginnings of African cinema. At the origin of the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) in 1969, he is recognized as the first critic and the first historian of African cinema with the publication, in 1975, of “African Cinema: from the origins to 1973”. He is the mentor of great figures of the seventh art, such as Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Ababacar Samb Makharam. The origin of his family name, a Portuguese Maran Jew, comes from his ancestor Sebastien Sabino Vieyra whose original name was Mama Gouyeh and who was first deported in slavery from Nigeria (Yoruba kingdom, principality of Bida), to Brazil, before returning to Dahomey (present-day Benin) around 1850. The freed Africans bearing the names of their former Portuguese masters are called the Agoudas in Benin.

Bio : PSV Films

BY PAULIN SOUMANOU VIEYRA, 1955

Is Africa in Africa, on the banks of the Seine or in the Latin Quarter? Bitter-sweet questions posed by a generation of artists and students in search of their civilization, their culture and their future. This film, the first by African film- makers, was made under the auspices of the Ethnographic Film Committee of the Museum of Man.(PSV FILMS)

PAULIN SOUMANOU VIEYRA (1925-1987) : 

Paulin Soumanou Vieyra is considered the precursor of African cinema. Director, critic, writer and historian, he is credited with some thirty documentaries and a single feature film, “En résidence surveillée” (“Under house arrest”). The first African to graduate from the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques (IDHEC), now the FEMIS, he shot Afrique-sur-Seine in 1955, a cult film that marked the beginnings of African cinema. At the origin of the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) in 1969, he is recognized as the first critic and the first historian of African cinema with the publication, in 1975, of “African Cinema: from the origins to 1973”. He is the mentor of great figures of the seventh art, such as Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Ababacar Samb Makharam. The origin of his family name, a Portuguese Maran Jew, comes from his ancestor Sebastien Sabino Vieyra whose original name was Mama Gouyeh and who was first deported in slavery from Nigeria (Yoruba kingdom, principality of Bida), to Brazil, before returning to Dahomey (present-day Benin) around 1850. The freed Africans bearing the names of their former Portuguese masters are called the Agoudas in Benin.

Bio : PSV Films

BY OUSMANE SEMBÈNE, 1963

The day of a carter who roams the streets of Dakar.

The title means “The Carter” in the Wolof language.

OUSMANE SEMBÈNE (1923-2007) : 

Trained as a film director at the Gorky Studio (Moscow). Self-taught. Novelist. Actor. Producer (Filmi Doomireew). The Elder of the Elders! Sembène Ousmane, writer and filmmaker, was born in Ziguinchor in southern Senegal. Alternately fisherman, bricklayer, car mechanic, Senegalese rifleman, docker and then CGT union leader in Marseille, he is interested in African literature. A passion that will lead him to write novels from 1956. In 1959, he returned to Senegal and toured the African continent. At the age of 40, he studied cinema in Moscow with Marc Donskoï and Sergueï Gherassimov. From 1962, he directed short films. In 1966, his first feature film “The Black of” … makes him enter the category of directors politically and socially committed. Georges Sadoul wrote: “Thanks to Sembene Ousmane, the black continent has finally taken its place in the history of world cinema.

Bio : Africultures

BY JEAN ROUCH, 1958

Three Nigeriens and a Nigerien settle in Treichville, a suburb of Abidjan, capital of Côte d’Ivoire. Like many of their compatriots, they try the adventure of the city… Bitter adventure for those who abandon their village and face a mechanized civilization.

JEAN ROUCH (1917-2004)

Jean Rouch was a French filmmaker and ethnologist, born on May 31, 1917 in Paris and died on February 18, 2004 in Niger. He is particularly known for his practice of direct cinema and for his ethnographic films on African peoples such as the Dogon and their customs. Considered the creator of ethnofiction, a sub-genre of docufiction, he is one of the theorists and founders of visual anthropology.

Bio : Wikipedia

PAR CHRIS MARKER, ALAIN RESNAIS ET GHISLAIN CLOQUET, 1953

Focusing on African art, and specifically on statues and masks, Alain Resnais’s film is a passionate plea against the until then unsuspected wrongdoings of colonialism: it has destroyed all the inner richness of pantheistic and magic culture of these regions, to slowly replace it by mass production, serving commercial and venal purposes…

BY OUMAROU GANDA, 1969

Niger. Cabascabo, an African veteran of the French colonial army in Indochina, has returned to Niger. He has squandered his fortune on an easy life in Niamey. Now a simple labourer, he sees the episodes of his life pass by.

OUMAROU GANDA (1935-1981)

Oumarou Ganda is a Nigerian actor and director, of the Djerma ethnic group, born in 1935 in Niamey and died on 1 January 1981 in the same city. Arrived in Paris to edit his first film Cabascabo in the middle of May 1968, Oumarou Ganda managed to make a premiere in the French capital. Selected at the Cannes Film Festival in 1965 for the International Critics’ Week, two months later he won the Special Jury Prize at the Sixth Moscow Film Festival and then the International Critics’ Prize in Malaga, Spain.

Bio : Wikipedia

PAR OUMAROU GANDA, 1980

A king has the habit of listening to the wishes of his people whilst walking in disguise on the streets of his kingdom. One day he overhears two brothers daydreaming of marrying the king’s daughters, even if it meant being beheaded one year later. The weddings take place and one of the brothers is decapitated one year later. The other one escapes at his wife’s insistence. On a long journey full of surprising incidents our hero becomes king of a village, with wives and subjects. But his earlier promise haunts him, and in order to save his family he accepts to be sacrificed.

OUMAROU GANDA (1935-1981)

Oumarou Ganda is a Nigerian actor and director, of the Djerma ethnic group, born in 1935 in Niamey and died on 1 January 1981 in the same city. Arrived in Paris to edit his first film Cabascabo in the middle of May 1968, Oumarou Ganda managed to make a premiere in the French capital. Selected at the Cannes Film Festival in 1965 for the International Critics’ Week, two months later he won the Special Jury Prize at the Sixth Moscow Film Festival and then the International Critics’ Prize in Malaga, Spain.

Bio : Wikipedia