In
The Guardian, Ousmane Sembene, the Senegalese-born "father of African cinema," talks with Bonnie Greer about filmmaking in Africa, his European experiences and why Live 8 is fake.
Africa, says Sembene, "is a continent going through a crisis. Nobody can deny that we have a lot of wars going on; brothers killing brothers; we have a lot of diseases and catastrophes. But on the other hand, we have a majority of individuals, both men and women, who are struggling on a daily basis in a heroic way and the outcome of whose struggle leaves no doubt.
..."Nowadays...I think it is France that is really leading [the way in] dividing Africa. Most of our presidents have dual nationalities, French and African. When the going gets tough, they run away to Paris and all our decisions are made in Paris. I think in that context it's very difficult to talk about pan-Africanism. Of course, it's just plain rhetoric. Why don't they abolish political borders in Africa? What is stopping them from developing education in Africa?
... [Big European initiatives, such as Make Poverty History, Hear Africa 05 and Live 8] are "fake," claims Sembene, "and I think African heads of state who buy into [these] ideas are liars. The only way for us to come out of poverty is to work hard.
... "I think there needs to be a rupture between Africa and Europe," he adds, "and all the international laws being conceived here in the West have to be revisited and changed. Just one case in point, now European countries are running into problems with China because of T-shirts. What did China do? China's flooding their markets with T-shirts. But last century, France and England bombed Shanghai -- they took weapons and invaded them. They can no longer do that because China has organised itself; and Vietnam has organised itself. That is what we lack back in Africa: we have been subjugated so much that all we can do is beg, and some even think what we are going through is a comedy.
...Today, "everywhere you go in Africa, in the big cities, you would think that you were in a Salvation Army store. [European industry has] even created an NGO whose role is to sell us second-hand clothes. I think the youth need to hear these stories. The struggle continues."
.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 6/08/2005 12:30:00 PM
Comments (0)
