Ousmane Sembene

Ousmane Sembene was born on Jan 01, 1923 in Senegal. Ousmane Sembene's big-screen debut came with Borom sarret directed by Ousmane Sembene in 1963. Ousmane Sembene is known for Faat Kiné directed by Ousmane Sembene, Venus Seye stars as Faat Kiné and Mame Ndoumbé as Maamy. Ousmane Sembene has got 16 awards and 7 nominations so far. The most recent award Ousmane Sembene achieved is British Film Institute Awards. The upcoming new movie Ousmane Sembene plays is Faat Kiné which will be released on Jan 15, 2004.

The first film director from an African country to achieve international recognition, Ousmane Sembene remains the major figure in the rise of an independent post-colonial African cinema. Sembene's roots were not, as might be expected, in the educated élite. After working as a mechanic and bricklayer, he joined the Free French forces in 1942, serving in Africa and France. In 1946, he returned to Dakar, where he participated in the great railway strike of 1947. The next year he returned to France, where he worked in a Citröen factory in Paris, and then, for ten years, on the dock in Marseilles. During this time Sembene became very active in trade union struggles and began an extraordinarily successful writing career. His first novel, "Le Docker Noir", was published in 1956 to critical acclaim. Since then, he has produced a number of works which have placed him in the foreground of the international literary scene. Long an avid filmgoer, Sembene became aware that to reach a mass audience of workers and preliterate Africans outside urban centers, cinema was a more effective vehicle than the written word. In 1961, he traveled to Moscow to study film at VGIK and then to work at the Gorky Studios. Upon his return to Senegal, Sembene turned his attention to filmmaking and, after two short films, he wrote and directed his first feature,