Ousmane Sembène (French: [usman sɑ̃bɛn]; 1 January 1923 or 8 January 1923 – 9 June 2007), was a Senegalese film director, producer and writer. The Los Angeles Times considered him one of the greatest authors of Africa and he has often been called the "father of African film". He was often credited for his work in the French style as Sembène Ousmane, which he seemed to favor as a way to underscore the "colonial imposition" of this naming ritual and subvert it.
Ousmane Sembène is primarily remembered for his milestone contribution to African film history. His early films represent a linguistic and cultural shift from telling the stories of Africans in colonial countries by colonial filmmakers or filmmakers who were descendants of colonials in their colonial languages to telling homegrown stories by Indigenous African filmmakers in Indigenous African languages. As the first to step behind the camera and achieve this shift in the history of African…