Ousmane Sembène

Ousmane Sembène (1 January 1923 or 8 January 1923 – 9 June 2007), was a Senegalese film director, producer and writer.

Ousmane Sembène in 1987

Quotes

God's Bits of Wood (1960)

• Striking brutally through the cloud curtain, like the beam from some celestial projector, a single ray of light lashed at the Koulouba, the governor's residence, poised like a sugar castle on the heights that bore its name.
  • Page 1

• The faces seemed to have lost all trace of personality. As if some giant eraser had rubbed out their individual traits they had taken on a common mask, the anonymous mask of a crowd.
  • Page 7

• God forgive me, I had forgotten Maimouna.
  • Chapter 3, Page 27

• Today, I will bring back something to eat.
  • Chapter 3, Page 34

• I told you yesterday, Rama, that I couldn’t do anything more for you, or for any of the striker’s families.
  • Chapter 4, Page 42

Xala (1973)

• El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye was what one might call a synthesis of two cultures: business had drawn him into the European middle class after a feudal African education. Like his peers, he made skillful use of his dual background, for their fusion was not complete.
  • Narrator, p. 4

• To his surprise he found himself already regretting this third marriage. Should he get a divorce this very morning? He put that solution out of his mind. Did he love N'Gone? The question brought no clear answer. It would not upset him to leave her. Yet to drop her after all he had spent seemed intolerable. There was the car. And the villa. And all the other expenses. To repudiate her now would hurt his male pride. Even if he were to reach such a decision he would be incapable of carrying it out. What would people say. That he was not a man.
  • Narrator, p. 26

• Just as nature re-imposes its life on ruins with small tufts of grass, the ancestral atavism of fetishism was being reawakened in El Hadji.
  • Narrator, p. 50

• In our country, this so-called 'gentry', imbued with their role as master—a role which began and ended with fitting out and mounting the female—sought no elevation, no delicacy in their relations with their partners. This lack of communication meant they were no better than stallions for breeding. El Hadji was as limited, short-sighted, and unintelligent as any of his kind.
  • Narrator, p. 58

• It is worth knowing something about the life led by urban polygamists. It could be called geographical polygamy, as opposed to rural polygamy, where all the wives and children live together in the same compound. In the town, since the families are scattered, the children have little contact with their father. Because of his way of life the father must go from house to house, villa to villa, and is only there in the evenings, at bedtime. He is therefore primarily a source of finance, when he has work. The mother has to look after the children's education, so academic achievement is often very poor.
  • Narrator, p. 61

• In effect, he had three villas and three wives, but where was his real home? At the houses of the three wives he was merely 'passing through.' Three nights each! He had nowhere a corner of his own into which he could withdraw and be alone."
  • Narrator, p. 69

• Papa John spoke about his life on the island. He talked about old times and the Feast of St Charles. [...] That year the feast had passed unmarked. There had been nothing to distinguish that Sunday from all the other Sundays. Holiday-makers, including many Europeans, had come to sunbathe on the warm sand of the beach. Papa John couldn't understand it at all: these Europeans who abandoned God's house for idleness. Hadn't they brought Catholicism to this country?
  • Narrator, p. 75

• Today, for the first time in three months since he had slapped her on the afternoon of his wedding, they had had a serious conversation. Rama had been the only one who dared oppose the marriage. Pity she was a girl. He would have been able to make something of her had she been a boy."
  • Narrator, p. 76

• All right. We are a bunch of clodhoppers. Who owns the banks? The insurance companies? The factories? The businesses? The wholesale trade? The cinemas? The bookshops? The hotels? All these and more besides are out of our control. We are nothing better than crabs in a basket. We want the ex-occupier's place? We have it. This Chamber is the proof. Yet what change is there really in general or in particular? The colonialist is stronger, more powerful than ever before, hidden inside us, here in this very place. He promises us the left-overs of the feast if we behave ourselves. Beware anyone who tries to upset his digestion, who wants a bigger profit. What are we? Clodhoppers! Agents! Petty traders! In our fatuity we call ourselves 'businessmen'! Businessmen without funds."=
  • El Hadji, p. 84

• Daughter, don't you know that in this country the man who is in gaol is better off than the worker or the peasant? No taxes to pay and in addition you are fed, lodged, and cared for."
  • Beggar, p. 102