Ousame Sembene & Dijibril Diop Mambéty
A new cinema arrived in Senegal with independence. Ousame Sambene lived in France from 1947, where he became an active member of the Communist Party and other anti-imperialist groups. He had the opportunity to study cinema at Gorky Studios, and returned to Senegal in 1960. He wrote several novels dealing with social change, some of which he later filmed. He is responsible for making the first film shot by a black African in Africa, Borom Sarret (1969), having already brought attention to Senegal and African cinema with his first feature La Noire de... (1966), which deals with colonialism and post-colonialism. Although no direct influence has been traced to radical filmmaking in France, Cuba or South America, Sembene´s film were radical and shared many themes — i.e. post-colonialism — with the revolutionary filmmaking in other parts of the world. Influenced by Sembene´s work, another filmmaker from the new Senegal cinema is Dijibril Diop Mambéty, who is regarded as part of the Third Cinema movement that was created by the Argentineans Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino with their article Towards a Third Cinema. In his film Hyenas (1992), for instance, Mambéty intimate story of love and revenge parallels a critique of neocolonialism and African consumerism. Yet, his films are different from every other radical or revolutionary directors, since Mambéty employs surrealist elements in his work; nonconventional revolutionary cinematic elements as employed by Third Cinema practicians.