Camp de Thiaroye

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Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote: "It´s possible that a good half of the greatest African movies ever made are the work of novelist-turned-filmmaker Ousmane Sembene." Rosenbaum hedges his language here, and I suggest that the insertion of the phrase "that have been seen by audiences outside of Africa (or even in Africa)" would be more accurate, but he makes a valid point.

Sembene was not only the pre-eminent filmmaker of his home country Senegal, but of his entire home continent. Obviously, there are many African countries in which the native film industry is non-existent or only in its nascent stage, but this just further illustrates the significance of Sembene´s oeuvre which still remains undervalued. Though it would be difficult to find any serious critic who is not familiar with Sembene, he and his films are seldom placed in the canon alongside the more widely accepted European, Asian and American auteurs. Only two of Sembene´s films ("Ceddo" and "Xala") received votes in the 2002 Sight and Sound poll and "Ceddo" remains unavailable on Region 1 DVD.

New Yorker has slowly been doling out a handful of Sembene´s films for North American audiences and each one reaffirms Sembene´s status not merely an "important" filmmaker, but a truly great one. His first film "Black Girl" (1966) may remain his greatest achievement, but his final film "Mooladé" (2004) (previously reviewed) hardly represented a discernible drop off in quality.

"Camp de Thiaroye" (1987) was the only film Sembene made during the 1980s, and it´s an extraordinary achievement. Co-directed with Thierny Faty Sow, the film tells the based on a true story of a group of Senagelese soldiers recently returned home from WW2. Greeted by a cheering crowd of white French citizens and eager to receive their back pay and return home, they are first held in a transitional camp in Senegal where they are to be "processed" by the French army. The "process" here involves denying them their rightful wages, feeding them slop not fit for dogs, and generally treating them as the less-than-human colonial subjects that most of the French officers consider them to be. They are no longer needed in the war, so there is no longer a need to maintain the pretense of treating them with respect or dignity.

Sembene never shied away from overt didacticism, but here he and Faty Sow use a more gentle touch. The film is leavened with a heavy dose of humor, and the jokes are on the Senegalese soldiers almost as often as they are on the French and Americans. The soldiers can be vain, short-sighted and sometimes even cowardly as they rage against the injustices imposed on them. Pays (Sijiri Bakaba) survived Buchenwald and has been driven mute and mad by the experience; he is the starkest representation of the largely unacknowledged price paid by African soldiers during the war.

Sgt. Aloise Diatta (Ibrahima Sane) stands apart from the crowd. A lover of classical music and an avid reader of European literature, Diatta left behind a white wife and a child in Paris where he plans to return to finish his education. His "acculturated" status gains him some respect from the French officers, but when he wanders into a brothel he learns how little has changed. First mistaken as a black American (and thus an acceptable customer) he is kicked out when the madam realizes he is only a native African and thus a "nigger."

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