Souleymane Cissé (film director)

Malian film director (born 19400)

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Souleymane Cissé

Souleymane Cissé in 2009

Born|  (1940-04-21) April 21, 1940 (age 83)

Bamako, Mali

Occupation(s)| Film director, screenwriter

Souleymane Cissé (born April 21, 1940) is a Malian film director, regarded as one of the first generation of African filmmakers.[1] He has been called "Africa's greatest living filmmaker"[2] while his film Yeelen has been called "conceivably the greatest African film ever made."[3]

## Biography[edit]

Born in Bamako and raised in a Muslim family, Souleymane Cissé was a passionate cinephile from childhood. He attended secondary school in Dakar and returned to Mali in 1960 after national independence.[4]

His film career began as an assistant projectionist for a documentary on the arrest of Patrice Lumumba. This triggered his desire to create films of his own, and he obtained a scholarship at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography,[5] the Moscow school of Cinema and Television.

In 1970 he returned to Mali, and joined the Ministry of Information as a cameraman, where he produced documentaries and short films. Two years later, he produced his first medium-length film, Cinq jours d’une vie (Five Days in a Life), which tells the story of a young man who drops out of a Qur'anic school and becomes a petty thief living on the street. Cinq Jours premiered at the Carthage Film Festival.

In 1974, Cissé produced his first full-length film in the Bambara language, Den muso (The Girl), the story of a young mute girl who has been raped. The girl becomes pregnant, and is rejected both by her family and by the child's father. Den muso was banned by the Malian Minister of Culture, and Cissé was arrested and jailed for the dubious charge of accepting French funding. Cissé would never know the real reason for his arrest, but while in jail he wrote the screenplay for his next film Baara (Work).[5] Cissé would finish and release this film to much acclaim four years later,[6] winning the Yenenga's Talon prize at Fespaco in 1979.

In 1982, Cissé produced Finyé (Wind), which tells the story of dissatisfied Malian youth rising up against the establishment. This earned him his second Yenenga's Talon, at 1983's Fespaco.

Between 1984 and 1987, he produced Yeelen (Light or Brightness), a coming-of-age film that won the Jury Prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first African film to win a prize in the festival's history.[7] Often cited as his greatest work, Cissé stated in an interview for Cahiers du Cinéma that it was "in part made in opposition to European ethnographic films” and that he “wanted to make a response to an external perception, a perception by white technicians and academics, an alien perception."[8]

In 1995, he produced Waati (Time), which competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.[9]

In 2009, he filmed a comedy that talks about polygamy, inspired by his father, when he, his eight brothers, and his sister should leave their house in 1988. In the film, O Ka (Our House), he reminded the legal battle of his sisters when they were expelled from their house in Bamako.[4]

Cissé is president of UCECAO, the Union of Creators and Entrepreneurs of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts of Western Africa. His younger brother is film director Alioune Ifra Ndiaye.[10]

## Legacy and style[edit]

Souleymane Cissé is one of the most recognized African filmmaker of the twentieth century, and his work exemplifies the development of social realism in African cinema, including its eventual movement towards the recovery of tradition.[1]

Cissé has also been called "a master of complex storytelling, preserving the mysterious in the mundane." His films have been known for their uncompromising depictions of military violence, abuse of money and power, trade unionism, and the enduring stranglehold of patriarchal traditions over Bamako's women and youth.[2]

## Filmography[edit]

* L’aspirant (short film, 1968)
* Source d’inspiration (short film, 1968)
* Dégal à Dialloubé (1970)
* Fête du Sanké (1971)
* Cinq jours d’une vie (1972)
* Den muso (1975)
* L’homme et ses idoles (short film, 1975)
* Baara (1978)
* Chanteurs traditionnels des Iles Seychelles (1978)
* Finye (1982)
* Yeelen (1987)
* Waati (1995)
* Tell Me Who You Are (2009)
* O Sembene! (2013)
* Our House (2015)

## References[edit]

1. ^ a b "African master: The films of Souleymane Cissé". bostonphoenix.com. Retrieved 2022-01-15.
2. ^ a b "To Save and Project: The 18th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation" (PDF). moma.org. Retrieved 2022-01-15.
3. ^ chicagoreader (2002-01-03). "Brightness (Yeleen)". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 2022-10-08.
4. ^ a b "Souleymane Cissé, le doyen du cinéma africain à Cannes". RFI (in French). 2015-05-12. Retrieved 2021-08-13.
5. ^ a b "Souleymane CISSE". Festival de Cannes 2021 (in French). Retrieved 2021-08-13.
6. ^ "Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019: Who put the Pan in Pan African cinema?". davidbordwell.net. 2019-07-07. Retrieved 2022-01-15.
7. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Yeelen". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-07-19.
8. ^ "Between Ethnography and Fiction: Films by Jean Rouch in Francophone Africa". Retrieved 2022-01-15.
9. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Waati". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-09-05.
10. ^ Cessou, Sabine (11 September 2017). "Alioune Ifra Ndiaye : de la scène à l'engagement politique". Afrique Magazine (in French). Retrieved 21 November 2020.

## External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Souleymane Cissé.

* Souleymane Cissé at IMDb

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