Ceddo / The Outsiders (2023 restoration Janus Films / The Criterion Collection)

Ousmane Sembène: Ceddo / The Outsiders (SN 1977) with Ismaila Diagne (il rapitore) and Tabara Ndiaye (principessa Dior Yacine). 

Senegal 1977. D: Ousmane Sembène. Scen.: Ousmane Sembène. F.: Georges Caristan, Orlando Lopez, Bara Diokhane, Seydina O. Gaye. M.: Florence Eymon, Dominique Blain. Scgf.: Alpha W. Diallo. Mus.: Manu Dibango. Int.: Tabara Ndiaye (principessa Dior Yacine), Alioune Fall (l’imam), Moustapha Yade (Madir Fatim Fall), Matura Dia (il re), Mamadou Ndiaye Diagne / Ismaila Diagne (il rapitore), Ousmane Camara (Farba Diogomay), Nar Modou (Saxewar), Mamadou Dioum (principe Biram), Oumar Gueye (Jaraaf), Ousmane Sembène (Ibrahima). Prod.: Filmi Doomi Reew. D.: 120’. Col.

    Language: Wolof (with Arabic and songs in English and Dyula) with English subtitles. The title is in Wolof, but I cannot find the Wolof letter original online.

    Restored in 4K in 2023 by Janus Films/The Criterion Collection, from the original 35 mm camera negative

    Copy from The Criterion Collection
    Introduced by Alain Sembène and Lee Kline (The Criterion Collection), hosted by Cecilia Cenciarelli.
    E-sottotitolo in Italian: Eleonor Gabbini.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2023: Cinemalibero.

    Viewed at Jolly Cinema, 25 June 2023.

Aboubakar Sanogo (Bologna 2023 catalog): " Long before many, the great Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), a founding, and, in many ways, spiritual father of African cinema, who posited History as central to all creative work, sought to engage with one of the greatest tragedies in human history, the enslavement of Africans and their loss of sovereignty in the twin hands of Islam and Euro-Christian colonialism. It is thus befitting, in this centennial celebration of the birth of this cinematic giant, to revisit the newly restored Ceddo, one of his most accomplished films. "

" Set in an imprecisely time between the 17th and the 19th century, the film centers the Ceddo, or “the people of refusal” who reject a regime that makes itself complicit with the rise to power of Islamic fanaticism and the slow but lasting encroachment of Euro-American enslavement and colonialism. Symbolizing the critical conscience of their people, the Ceddo express their discontent by kidnapping Princess Dior of the royal family and demanding an instant change in the management of the polity. This will lead to their expulsion, exile and forced religious conversion. But their indomitable spirit of resistance will help make history and offer hope for the future of Africa and the world. "

" Without and in lieu of special effects and massive epic scenes, Sembène chooses cinematic minimalism and demonstrates his absolute mastery in the mise-en-scène of open and outdoor spaces. There he imprints his agorafilic signature – the staging of conflictual narrative in open spaces – which double as an agora, and in which the contradictory tendencies of a given polity get to be worked out, partly through a staging of the legendary African deliberative and declamatory tradition via multiple modalities of the face off. "

" This film is at once a masterclass in political philosophy and African constitutionalism, anticipates by two decades themes and styles he would explore in films such as Guelwaar (1992) and Moolaade (2004) and underscores Sembène’s faith in African humanism as a way out of the continent’s past, contemporary and potential future impasses. " Aboubakar Sanogo

AA: One of Ousmane Sembène's greatest films, a calm and compact epic, with a firm grip on the aesthetics of duration, crystallizing powerfully centuries of colonialism and slavery masked by the dual missionary penetrations by Christianity and Islam. The most electrifying account of Islamic colonial oppression I have seen, portraying the way to absolute submission, the Imam like a voodoo doctor making all slaves to his will. The Ceddo are the native Africans who reject both Christianity and Islam. Their difference: the Christian clergy carry no guns. The Muslims are armed and act with military discipline and determination, executing all who resist. When the captive Princess Dior is released, she immediately targets and executes the totalitarian Imam. The spell is broken.

A grand, stark, atavistic drama of power, oppression, resistance and liberation.

One of Sembène's great films of feminism, along with Moolaadé.

From sources reportedly all faded, all in bad shape, a beautiful restoration has been achieved, paying attention to the differences in skin tones, with a tender and warm general colour world, refined in the varying shades of the exterior conditions in African sunlight. We also learned from the introductions that the sky is different in different countries of Africa.