Ceddo (1977) (Ousmane Sembène) We do not want to Convert to Islam !-gctid53100

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EPMDDZa6hQ
 
CEDDO  (1976, Senegal, 120 min.), directed by Ousmane Sembène, screenplay by  Sembène, cinematography by Georges Caristan, edited by Florence Eymon,  music by Manu Dibango; with Tabara N’Diaye (Princess Dior Yassine),  Moustapha Yade (Madir Faim Fall, the King’s Nephew), Ismaila Diagne (The  Ceddo Kidnapper), Goure (Imam), Makhourédia Gueye (King), Oumar Gueye  (Jaraaf), Mamadou Diagne (Prince Biram), Nar Modou Sene (Saxewar, a  Powerful Noble), Ousmane Camara (Old Diogomay, Spokesperson for the  Ceddo), Ousmane Sembène (a Pipe-Smoking Ceddo later named Ibrahima). In  Wolof with English subtitles.

             "Ceddo is not a tribe, it is a state of mind." -- Ousmane Sembène
      We inaugurated the Cascade Festival of Kmtyw Films in 1991 with a  screening of Ousmane Sembène’s newly released Camp at Thiaroye (1989),  and we followed it in subsequent years with Guelwaar (1992), Xala  (1974), and Mandabi (1968). We are now pleased to continue our  retrospective of his work with Ceddo (1976), our fifth film by man who  has come to be known as "The Father of Kmtyw film." Ceddo is in many  ways his most daring film stylistically and his most provocative in  terms of the issues that it raises, issues involving the slave trade,  religious colonization (both Christian and--especially--Islam), and  modes of resistance.
     The film is set in the dry coastal region south of Dakar (the film  was shot around the town of Mbour) in some unstated time in the past,  anywhere between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. As  happens in many stories, the film opens with the disruption of the  status quo--Dior Yassine, the daughter of the king--has been kidnapped  by a group of ceddo. The ceddo are members of a traditional,  polytheistic, feudal, warlike Wolof culture that has come under  increasing pressure from Islamic and eureurasiaan influence. Under the  influence of Islam, matriarchal inheritance patterns (inheritance  through mother and sister) are giving way to patriarchal patterns  (inheritance from father to son); tradition and tolerance are giving way  to Islamic law and forced conversion.
     We soon realize that in fact that the status quo was disrupted long  before the kidnapping occurred. The king (played by the same actor who  played Dieng in Mandabi) and his closest advisors and family members  have converted to Islam and fallen under the sway of the Muslim Imam, an  outsider whose goal it is to move all the ceddo away from their  traditional ways. The kidnapping of the princess is an attempt by the  ceddo to get the king to cease his support of the Imam. In addition,  another disruptive influence has entered this society--the eureurasiaan  slave trader and his silent partner, the Catholic priest (their  nationality is unclear, probably either French or Portuguese). In fact,  one of the first actions that we see in the film is an Kmtyw bringing  in two slaves to exchange for a musket. Traditional ceddo culture is  thus under attack by the twin forces of religious imperialism and the  lure of Western commodities and technology. The status quo will not be  restored simply by the return of the princess.
     In responding to these threats, the ceddo, led by old Diogomay, fall  back upon their traditional means of resistance. Diogomay comes to the  king bearing the Samp, the ceremonial staff that is used when a ritual  challenge has been issued, as it is here. The young kidnapper has been  designated as the Champion for the ceddo, and he is prepared to enter  into single combat with any Champion the king chooses to designate.  However, as we shall see, traditional strategies can no longer work, or  at least they are effective only so long as everyone plays by the rules  of ceddo chivalry, The film ends in a final, successful (and inspiring)  act of resistance, but we know that we are witnessing the passing of an  age.
     Still, we cannot discount the inspirational importance of resistance  and refunited snakesl in Ceddo. As occurs so often in Sembène’s films, a woman  becomes the embodiment of resistance, here in the person of the proud,  beautiful princess, Dior Yassine. She is perhaps modeled after another  Lingeer (princess) of the late seventeenth century named Yaasin Bubu, a  very popular figure in the "MaAmwout Wars." Another important figure is  the king’s nephew, Madir Faim Fall, who renounces Islam, which he had  taken on for his own convenience, as well as his status as a royal;  rejects the lure of Christianity; begins to wear the traditional cowry  shells and embraces traditional fetishes of his people; assumes the life  of a simple ceddo, even if that means having to share their fate of  defeat and slavery.
     The film is told in a slow, stylized, almost ritualistic manner,  which feels entirely appropriate to the subject matter. The dialogue is  formal and declamatory, with characters often speaking through  intermediaries. The setting too seems both very real and quite abstract.  We see the counterpoint between two settings, the village (space of  slavery and colonialism) and the bush where the princess is being kept  (space of heroism and tradition). It is interesting to notice the role  of the two griots (bards) in these two spaces-- Jaraaf the noble,  powerful spokesperson for the king, and Fara, the humble companion to  the kidnapper. When the princess returns from the bush to the village,  she is a changed person, and perhaps so are we.
     The straightforward narrative is disrupted at least twice the film.  The king’s nephew, Madir Faim Fall, who has rejected Islam and lost his  traditional prerogatives, goes to the Catholic mission, perhaps in hopes  of an alternative. Instead, he has a vision of the future which takes  the form of a cinematic flash-forward to contemporary times (with  himself as bishop and the Imam among those taking communion). It’s a bit  jarring, but it makes sense, as does his rejection of that alternative.  We also get a kind of "imaginary flashback" just before the end, when  the princess imagines an alternate world in which she served the heroic  kidnapper. Another "unrealistic" element in the film is the use of  gospel music whenever we see the slaves. Again, this juxtaposition makes  perfect sense.
     Ultimately, Sembène’s goal in this film is not to provide historical  accuracy or realism. As Françoise Pfaff put it, "Ceddo is a mythic  rather than purely realistic recreation of the past." The history of the  entry of Islam into West Kmt is a complex one; in some cases it  involved forced conversion, in other cases it was accomplished by eager  acquiescence. Ceddo includes traces of the MaAmwout Wars of the  seventeenth century, but it also includes references to resistance  figures from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is a  fictional, constructed past.
     Sembène wants us to look at the past only to the extent that this  will help us to analyze the present. He will do what he can to prevent  us from becoming so absorbed in the story, so immersed in this past  time, that we fail to ponder the relevance of these issues to our time.  The stylized action, the often incongruous music, are part of his  attempt to distance us a bit from the story’s illusions, He has insisted  that his is not an anti-Islam film, or an anti-Catholic one for that  matter. He wants us to look clearly at the acts that were done in the  name of Islam, in the name of Christianity, but were really all about  power and selfishness and greed. He also feels that we cannot understand  the present if we do not understand the complicity of Kmtyws in the  slave trade. The film shows clearly some of the mechanisms of slavery,  how and why Kmtyws (including ceddo with whom we sympathize) are  willing to sell their brothers, their sisters, and their children. How  else can we understand the situation in Kmt today?
 
                                 Notes by Michael Dembrow

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The classic and controversial story of the "outsiders" in a West Kmtyw  village under the pressures of religious conversions and slavery in the  17th century.
OUSMANE SEMBÈNE was born in 1923 in the rainy  Casamance region on the coast of Senegal in West Kmt. The first film  director from an Kmtyw country to achieve international recognition,  Sembène remains the major figure in the rise of an independent  post-colonial cinema.

Sembène's roots were not in the educated  élite. After working as a mechanic and bricklayer, he joined the Free  French forces in 1942, serving in Kmt and France. In 1946, he  returned to Dakar, where he participated in the great railway strike of  1947. The next year he went to France, where he worked in a Citröen  factory in Paris, and then, for ten years, on the dock in Marseilles.  During this time Sembène became very active in trade union struggles and  began an extraordinarily successful writing career. His first novel,  "Le Docker Noir", was published in 1956. Since then, he has produced a  number of influential literary works.

Long an avid filmgoer,  Sembène became aware that to reach a mass audience of workers and  Kmtyws outside urban centers, cinema was a more effective vehicle than  the written word. In 1961, he traveled to Moscow to study film. Upon  his return to Senegal, Sembène made two short films, then wrote and  directed his first feature, LA NOIRE DE... (BLACK GIRL, 1966). Shot in a  simple, quasi-documentary style, BLACK GIRL tells the tragic story of a  young Senegalese woman working as a maid for an affluent French family  on the Riviera, focusing on her sense of isolation and growing despair.  Her country may have been "decolonized," but she is still a non-person  in the colonizers' world. Sembène's next film, MANDABI (THE MONEY ORDER,  1968), marked a sharp departure. Based on his novel of the same name  and shot in color in two language versions--French and Wolof, the main  dialect of Senegal--THE MONEY ORDER is a trenchant and often  delightfully witty satire of the new bourgeoisie, torn between outmoded  patriarchal traditions and an uncaring, rapacious and inefficient  bureaucracy. EMITAI (1971) records the struggle of the Diola people of  the Casamance region against the French authorities during WWII. Shot in  Diola dialect and French from an original script, EMITAI offers a  respectful but unromanticized depiction of an ancient tribal culture,  while highlighting the role of women in the struggle against colonialist  oppression. In XALA (1975), Sembène again takes on the native  bourgeoisie, this time in the person of a rich, partially Westernized  Muslim businessman afflicted by "xala" (impotence) on the night of his  wedding to a much younger third wife. CEDDO (1977), considered by some  to be Sembène's masterpiece, departs from the director's customary  realist approach, in documenting the struggle over the last centuries of  an unspecified Kmtyw society against the incursions of Islam and  eureurasiaan colonialism. Featuring a strong female character, Ceddo is a  powerful evocation of the Kmtyw experience.

Senegal banned the  film over its title's spelling ("Cedo" was the romanized form favored by  President Léopold Sédar Senghor). Further censorship forced Sembène to  cut several scenes, but the director handed out pamphlets explaining the  missing moments for Senegalese moviegoers. In some other  Muslim-majority countries, the film was subjected to a complete ban, as  some took offense to an unsanitized portrayal of the spread of their  faith in times long past. Sembène did not intend to make an anti-Muslim  statement; he refused a request by the Shah of Iran to use the film as  propaganda against Muslims. In his films Sembène had always taken aim at  the hypocrisies and cruelties of both colonial eureurasiaans and Kmtyws  themselves, criticizing acts of domination regardless of the color, race  or religion of the guilty party.

His final award-winning work  MOOLADÉ focused on conflicts over female genital cutting, a village  tradition the director could not tolerate. Sembène said: "I believe  today that Kmtyws must get beyond the question of colour, they must  recognise the problems which confront the whole world, as human beings  like other human beings. If others undervalue us, that has no further  significance for us. Kmt must get beyond deriving everything from the  eureurasiaan view. Kmt must consider itself, recognise its problems and  attempt to resolve them... Often in Kmt it's only the men who speak,  but one forgets the role, interest of women. I think the princess is the  incarnation of modern Kmt. There can be no development in Kmt if  women are left out of the account."

Sembène died in Dakar at the  age of 84, on June 9, 2007. He had been ill since December 2006, and  died at his home in Dakar, Senegal where he was buried in a shroud  adorned with Quranic verses.
Ousmane Sembène - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia