Born 1 January 1923

Died 9 June 2007 (aged 84) Dakar, Senegal

Other names Father of African film

Occupation film director, producer, screenwriter, actor & author

Ziguinchor, Casamance, Senegal The son of a fisherman, Ousmane Sembène was born in
Ziguinchor in Casamance to a Lebou family. From childhood Sembène was exposed to Serer
religion especially the Tuur festival, in which he was made cult servant. Although the Tuur
demands offerings of curdled milk to the ancestral spirits (Pangool), Sembène did not take his
responsibility as cult servant seriously and was known for drinking the offerings made to the
ancestors.[3] Some of his adult work draws on Serer themes. His maternal grandmother reared
him and greatly influenced him. Women play a major role in his works.[3] Sembène's
knowledge of French and basic Arabic besides Wolof, his mother tongue, followed his
attendance at a madrasa, as was common for many Islamic boys, and a French school until
1936, when he clashed with the principal. He worked with his father—he was prone to
seasickness—until 1938, then he moved to Dakar, where he worked a variety of manual labour
jobs.[4] In 1944, Sembène was drafted into the Senegalese Tirailleurs (a corps of the French
Army).[5] His later World War II service was with the Free French Forces. After the war, he
returned to his home country and in 1947 participated in a long railroad strike on which he later
based his seminal novel God's Bits of Wood. Late in 1947, he stowed away to France, where he
worked at a Citroën factory in Paris and then on the docks at Marseille, becoming active in the
French trade union movement. He joined the communist-led CGT and the Communist party,
helping lead a strike to hinder the shipment of weapons for the French colonial war in Vietnam.
During this time, he discovered the Harlem Renaissance writer Claude McKay and the Haitian
Marxist writer Jacques Roumain