As a proudly African artist seeking to reach audiences of all races and nationalities, Sembène broke down language barriers - the dialogue of Ceddo is in Wolof, Arabic and English - while basing his stories, characters and images on indigenous models that are nonetheless recognizable by viewers everywhere. By depicting and critiquing the pressures imposed by colonialism and theocracy on an archetypal African community, Ceddo serves as both a history lesson and a call to arms, encouraging audiences to think long and hard about the frequently regrettable roles of Western and Middle Eastern interventions in African affairs. The film is also a nonstop dance of color, gesture and music that pleases the eye and ear as thoroughly as the narrative captivates the mind.
The story takes place over a day and a half in an unspecified West African country. French colonialists still have power in the village, as the presence of a Roman Catholic priest and a European slave trader show; but they are weaker than before, so the priest never has anything to say and the slaver is valued only for the weapons and commodities he provides. In this community at this moment the rising force is Islam, which became a dominant element of Senegalese society when rulers embraced it as a way of throwing off Christian colonialism in the second half of the 18th century.
In the film's view, this was simply trading one form of outside influence for another, and the title characters of Ceddo are "outsiders" who resist the conversion to Islam that their king is forcing on them. They confront the ruler to defend their traditional ways and oppose the imposition of new customs, showing their seriousness by kidnaping the king's daughter and declaring that she will remain their hostage until the culture war is resolved in their favor. Nobles, councilors and ordinary villagers divide into factions; the Muslim imam prepares a trap for his adversaries; and some of the Ceddo approach the slave dealer to exchange relatives for rifles. Fire, bloodshed and other miseries follow before the film concludes with a richly surprising final scene.
Alongside his cinematic activities, Sembène was a novelist, essayist and poet whose reach extended well beyond the movie theaters of the world. For him the film medium had strong links to Africa's age-old oral tradition, and his narratives tend to have a poetic flow, more like meandering African rivers than straightforward Hollywood highways. He also disdained neat solutions or simplistic answers to the sociocultural problems raised by his stories, believing that human nature and human history are both too ambiguous to be easily resolved. This explains why Ceddo moves in such unpredictable ways, unfolding a highly dramatic story yet branching often into subplots, digressions and unexpected anecdotes.
Ceddo also illustrates Sembène's insistence on giving full weight to people who have been marginalized in African culture, very much including women, even though this has antagonized some conservative African viewers. Prompting thought and educating viewers are key agendas of Ceddo and other Sembène films. "We [Africans] have experienced several historical cycles that we don't know [enough] about," he told me when I interviewed him for The Christian Science Monitor in 1990. "The colonials take all the credit for everything," he added. "The colonial system, wherever it is, is like a leech that lives from the blood of the people who are exploited. And they lose their identity.... It's a disease, and even after it's cured, the symptoms remain." Hence the scornful treatment of all invasive and oppressive forces - be they Christian or Muslim or Eurocentric or mercantilist - that bring chaos and humiliation into the lives of people simply trying to live their lives as best they can.
Ceddo contains few close-ups, since Sembène preferred wide shots that show characters in moment-to-moment contact with their environment. This gives close-ups all the more power when they do occur, and the film's overall style is marked by artful framing, graceful camera movement and supple uses of the zoom lens. Its music, ranging from indigenous drumming to spirituals that link the story with the travails of American slaves, is also remarkable. Its cinematic excellence notwithstanding, Ceddo raised enough hackles to be banned for years in Senegal, partly because of a politically charged dispute over whether a single or double consonant should be used in the spelling of its title. The ban eventually fell, and Ceddo has been widely recognized as one of Sembène's most vital films.
Director: Ousmane Sembène
Producer: Robert Loko
Screenplay: Ousmane Sembène
Cinematographer: Georges Caristan
Film Editing: Florence Eymon
Art Direction: Alpha W. Diallo
Music: Manu Dibango
With: Tabata Ndiaye (Princess Dior), Moustapha Yade (Madir Fatim Fall), Ismaila Diagne (Kidnaper), Matoura Dia (King), Oumar Gueye (Jaraaf), Mamadou Dioumé (Prince Biram), Nar Modou (Saxewar), Ousmane Camara (Diogomay), Ousmane Sembène (Ibrahima)
Color-111m.
by David Sterritt
