Hearing of the difficulties faced by the BFI and the Cineteca di Bologna as they attempted to digitise the work of the great filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, Martin Scorsese was prompted to action. ‘It was like the movie was a prisoner,’ says Alain Sembène, the director’s son, recalling how the 35mm negatives of Black Girl (La Noire de…, 1966), his father’s seminal 55-minute debut, were being stored by the film laboratory Eclair in France. ‘It was stuck in bureaucracy because there were documents my father had not signed. We almost gave up. Then Martin Scorsese wrote a letter saying it was a scandal, and boom, it happened.’
I was speaking to Alain Sembène following the premiere of the restoration of his father’s second film Mandabi at the Lumière Festival in Lyon in 2019. Mandabi –the first feature made in the Wolof language – has been remastered in 4K with StudioCanal’s partners at the French post-production company VDM, scanned from the original 35mm interpositive. The sound too has been remastered from badly damaged archive footage. At last, the film can be fully appreciated as a crucial work by a master director.
That it took Scorsese’s efforts to kickstart the remastering of the director’s work is an indication of the widespread failure to appreciate Sembène. This may seem an odd statement, given how often he is described as ‘the father of African cinema’. Yet underlying this praise is a suggestion that Sembène’s legitimacy rests on where he made films: it’s time that discussion of Sembène’s work focused on what it is about.
His magnificent 1968 film Mandabi is about the problems that the ageing, unemployed Ibrahima (Makhouredia Gueye) faces when he receives a money order from his nephew in Paris. Black Girl – about the struggles of a young Senegalese woman working as a servant in Paris – was Sembène’s first feature, but Mandabi is the film that marks out the themes of his career: his anti-capitalist, anti-religious concerns, and his clear-sighted probing of issues of class.
The film may attack colonialism but, importantly, it also attacks those citizens who, once the European powers left the continent, did everything in their power to maintain the status quo. In Senegal, this meant retaining French as the official language, even though most Senegalese only spoke Wolof or Arabic, and taking on elements of bureaucracy to ensure that it was nigh on impossible to climb the social ladder.
For all its weighty implications, the beauty of Mandabi is that it looks and feels so simple. The plot follows Ibrahima, an unemployed father of seven, as he tries to cash the money order. He has two wives who dote on him and turn a blind eye to his failings; although life is difficult, he is content. That changes when his nephew sends him a money order for 25,000 CFA francs (about $50). The parable then slowly reveals itself – the arrival of capital from France will ruin his life.
To start with, Ibrahima cannot understand the letter, written as it is in French. Then the post office refuses to accept the money order because he doesn’t have an identity card – which he cannot get because he doesn’t have a birth certificate. Meanwhile, word gets out about the windfall, and friends, neighbours and religious figures come to him asking for donations and loans, while more educated men set out to swindle Ibrahima. Sembène reinforces his critique of capitalism by appearing in the film himself, sitting at a table beneath a Che Guevara poster.
Born to a family of fishermen in the southern Senegalese region of Casamance in 1923, Sembène moved to France after World War II, where he worked as a docker, becoming active in the unions and embracing Marxist philosophy, before a back injury forced him to rest. He used his time to write poetry and prose; his third novel, God’s Bits of Wood (1960), about the difficulties of being an immigrant in France, was a huge hit. Sembène adapted Mandabi from his novella Le Mandat, which was first published in France in 1966, around the time that Black Girl screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
At the First World Festival of Negro Arts, held in Dakar in April 1966, Sembène won a literature prize for Le Mandat and a film prize for Black Girl. André Malraux, author and French minister of culture, was a guest of honour, and offered to arrange for France’s Centre national de la cinématographie to fund his next work. Ironically, given the film’s themes, Sembène took the money and used it, in Mandabi, to reveal Europe’s attempts to manage Africa for its own ends – to show that colonialism persists even when the guns have left, in the history told, and in the cultural and economic heritage that the colonial powers left behind.
One of the reasons that Mandabi was the first feature-length film in Wolof was that colonial administrations had banned natives from filmmaking – simply making the film was a political act. Sembène would argue that cinema enabled him to speak to the illiterate citizens that his novels were about.
All the big targets in Mandabi would remain central to Sembène’s work throughout his career. The criticism of religion would feature right up to his ninth and final film, Moolaadé (2004), which addresses female genital mutilation. Ceddo (1977) was heavily censored in Senegal, according to rumour because of its religious content.
Sembène composed the score for Mandabi himself, with the music choices reflecting the traditions of African music, rather than the fusions popular in America and Cuba at the time. Every choice in the film is packed with such double meaning. Mandabi poses the question: why are Africans treated as second-class citizens, not just abroad but at home, in their own countries? Its clear-sighted urgency remains undimmed today.
Kaleem Aftab, Sight & Sound, June 2021
MANDABI (THE MONEY ORDER)
Director: Ousmane Sembène
Production Companies: Filmi Doomireew, Comptoir Français du Film Production
Participation: Ministère de la Coopération
Executive Producer: Robert de Nesle
Producer: Ousmane Sembène
Unit Production Manager: Ibrahima Barro
Production Managers: Jean Maumy, Paul S. Vieyra
Production Secretary: Awa Sylla
Assistant Director: Babakar Samb
Script Supervisor: Anne-Marie Rochas
Script: Ousmane Sembène
Director of Photography: Paul Soulignac
Camera Operators: Maya Bracher, J. Karistan
Assistant Camera Operator: Issa Tiaw
Gaffer: Emile Ganem
Assistant Gaffers: Dia Cherif, J. Diatta
Editors: Gilou Kikoïne, Max Saldinger
Laboratory: GTC
Music: Ousmane Sembène
Sound: Henry Molihe
Sound Assistant: El Hadji Mbow
Boom Operator: Mawa Gay
Cast
Makhouredia Gueye (Ibrahima Dieng)
Yunus Ndiay (Méty, 1st wife)
Isseu Niang (Aram, 2nd wife)
Mustafa Ture (M’barka, shopkeeper)
Farre Sar (businessman)
Serine Ndiay (Imam)
Mussa Diuf (Abdou, the nephew)
Serigne Sow (Maissa)
Christof Colomb (water merchant)
Madoun Faye (postman)
Mamadu Cisoko
Therese Bas (Dieng’s sister)
Ousmane Sembène
Senegal/France 1968
92 mins
An Independent Cinema Office release in partnership with STUDIOCANAL
The screening on Sun 25 Jul 18:20 will be followed by a 25min pre-recorded Q&A with Liz Chege (director of Africa in Motion Festival in Scotland), Dr Aboubakar Sanogo (one of the world’s experts in African Cinema and leading the UNESCO project to restore 50 African classics) and Ivan Mbowa (a business leader with expertise on why Africans are still experiencing the colonial and bureaucratic difficulties with day to day finance you see in the film).
Seniors’ matinee on Mon 26 Jul 14:00 includes an intro by film curator, programmer and BFI London Film Festival Programme Advisor, Keith Shiri
NEW RELEASES & RE-RELEASES
Another Round
From Fri 9 Jul
Jumbo
From Fri 9 Jul
Tove
From Fri 9 Jul
Deerskin
From Fri 16 Jul
Girlfriends
From Fri 23 Jul
Mandabi
From Fri 23 Jul
I Never Cry (Jak najdalej stad)
From Fri 23 Jul
Limbo
From Fri 30 Jul
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
From Fri 30 Jul
Now, Voyager
From Fri 6 Aug
The Story of a Three Day Pass (La Permission)
From Sat 7 Aug
Censor
From Fri 20 Aug
Souad
From Fri 27 Aug
T A P E PRESENTS: BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?
In Conversation with Nikesh Shukla
Fri 23 Jul 18:20
Pinky
Sat 24 Jul 11:40
Lilting
Sat 24 Jul 17:20; Fri 30 Jul 20:40
Head-On (Gegen die Wand)
Tue 27 Jul 20:40
Shoot the Messenger + Q&A with director Ngozi Onwurah, hosted by T A P E’s Angela Moneke
Thu 29 Jul 17:45
Culture Shock: Short Film Programme + Q&A with UNDR LNDN
Fri 30 Jul 17:40
What Will People Say (Hva vil folk si)
Sat 31 Jul 17:30
BFI SOUTHBANK
Welcome to the home of great film and TV, with three cinemas and a studio, a world-class library, regular exhibitions and a pioneering Mediatheque with 1000s of free titles for you to explore. Browse special-edition merchandise in the BFI Shop.We're also pleased to offer you a unique new space, the BFI Riverfront – with unrivalled riverside views of Waterloo Bridge and beyond, a delicious seasonal menu, plus a stylish balcony bar for cocktails or special events. Come and enjoy a pre-cinema dinner or a drink on the balcony as the sun goes down.
BECOME A BFI MEMBER
Enjoy a great package of film benefits including priority booking at BFI Southbank and BFI Festivals. Join today at bfi.org.uk/join
BFI PLAYER
We are always open online on BFI Player where you can watch the best new, cult & classic cinema on demand. Showcasing hand-picked landmark British and independent titles, films are available to watch in three distinct ways: Subscription, Rentals & Free to view.
See something different today on player.bfi.org.uk
Join the BFI mailing list for regular programme updates. Not yet registered? Create a new account at www.bfi.org.uk/signup
Programme notes and credits compiled by the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
Questions/comments? Contact the Programme Notes team by email