Ousmane Sembene's Camp De Thiaroye in the Context of Anticolonial African Literature

Abstract

Almost all of the countries on the African continent have been under the domination of European powers for a certain period of time throughout their history. As a result, many books have been written on the continent, adopting an anti-colonial rhetoric. Numerous authors have analyzed European colonialism and offered suggestions for getting rid of it. Senegalese Ousmane Sembene is an anti-colonial writer and director. In a way, his films can be considered as a version of anticolonial literature transferred to the movie screen. Sembene is an extremely important name for African cinema. He is the first person directed a feature film (La Noire de…, 1966) in Sub-Saharan Africa. His political stance has been a major factor in shaping the identity of the cinema not only of his country Senegal, but of the entire African continent. He has influenced a significant number of directors from the African continent and is very important in the context of political. His pan-Africanist personality and view of cinema as a tool of social transformation allow his films to be evaluated in the context of anticolonialist literature. Anticolonial themes are seen in Sembene's films both in terms of content and mode of production. The movie Camp de Thiaroye (1988) also has an important place in this context. In this film, he exhibited the ways in which colonialism produced symbolic and physical violence. He also revealed the stages of Africans gaining consciousness on their way to independence. In this study, Sembene's Camp de Thiaroye is analyzed in order to reveal the relationship between anticolonialist African literature and African cinema. As a result of the study, it was seen that Sembene produced a strong anticolonial discourse through his cinema and brought up many issues mentioned by the anticolonial literature.