Didn’t know about this brother until my friend Wendi Dunlap wrote to me about him today.

Here’s the email she sent:

I must admit that I’m not always the first to know things so forgive me if this is “old news.” While watching the Oscars, I discovered that Senegelese filmmaker and writer Sembene Ousmane passed away last year. For those of you unfamiliar with his work, I highly recommend that you check him out. His work is regularly shown at indie film theaters throughout [New York C]ity and you can pick up his novels at any bookstore.

One of his best known novels is “God’s Bits of Wood,” which was part of the African Literature course when I took it at Cornell. Xala is one of his more critically acclaimed films that critiques both polygamy and the corrpution of modern African leadership. A few years ago I saw “Camp de Thiaroye” at the Film Forum, a brilliant and slightly autobiographical story of how Senegelese soldiers who fought bravely for France in World War II were detained in camps and refused pay by the French colonial government when they returned home. Their military training was seen as a threat to colonial rule and the French never intended to award them for their service in defeating fascism anyway.

If you’re not famliar with Ousmane, I highly recommend that you check him out. He has always been one of my favorite filmmakers.

Best,

Wendi