Ceddo

EN

“There are rhetorical games, theatrical turnabouts, negotiations and oaths, declarations and rights of response: speech is always binding. [...] In this way, Sembene’s film becomes an extraordinary document on the African body (today’s actors and yesterday’s heroes), upstanding in its language (here, Wolof), as though the voice, accent and intonation, the material of the language and the content of the speeches, were solid blocks of meaning in which every word, for the one who bears it, is the last word.”

Serge Daney1

“Through an audacious interweaving of temporalities, encompassing a flash-forward to Sembène’s era and a more ambiguous flashback, Ceddo presents a version of the past that is neither fixed nor singular. Rather than accepting the corrupt state of contemporary society as inevitable, Sembène’s imaginative rendering of history subversively suggests that things could still be otherwise.”

Yasmina Price2

“[…] Ceddo concludes with a course not taken in recorded history—a female heir hostile toreligious authorities who have just led mass conversions of her people. It hints at the  possibilities of what might have occurred if historical actors had made different choices. It suggests not only history’s contingency but also the promise of changing history’s direction. The very lack of resolution in Ceddo’s plot creates a space for endless possibilities and for spectator subjectivity.”

Awam Amkpa and Gunja SenGupta3

Ousmane Sembène: The film is not really forbidden. It was subjected to the commission of cinematic control that made two recommendations: first, I had to declare that the film was not about current events; second, I had to change the spelling of the title, which meant replacing the two letter ‘d’s of Ceddo by one, following the issuing of a presidential decree. The commission of control declared itself overtaken by this matter. I protested because I consider that the highest authority, my government, is not empowered to give me counsel. The person that signed this decree as well as its counselors are illiterate in the matter.

Josie Fanon: You have therefore sacrificed the broadcasting of your film in Senegal to a question of orthography?

That’s part of our internal problems. Actually, that could resemble a Byzantine quarrel but for us it’s a matter of cultural nationalism. The ban, or in any case the intention of banning the film, refers to a language that is not taught, that has not the right to be quoted in Senegal. To prevent the broadcasting of a film under this pretext is an abuse of power. At the time I wrote an open letter to the President Senghor, and in the Senegalese press there was a big debate about the role of national languages. The University of Dakar published the first Senegalese dictionary and conceded to me on the question of the two ‘d’s. Nevertheless the film hasn’t been screened.

Josie Fanon in conversation with Ousmane Sembène4

• 1Serge Daney, “Ceddo,” 1979.
• 2Yasmina Price, “Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène: History in the Remaking,” The Criterion Collection, 21 May 2024.
• 3Awam Amkpa and Gunja SenGupta, “History in Ousmane Sembène’s Guelwaar and Ceddo,” Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, no. 27 (November 2010), 21.
• 4Josie Fanon, “In the Name of Tolerance: A Meeting with Ousmane Sembène,” in Ousmane Sembène: Interviews, ed. Annett Busch and Max Annas (University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 113.