Samba Gadjigo

Universitaire et réalisateur sénégalais établi aux Etats-Unis.

Samba GADJIGO est un universitaire, réalisateur, scénariste et producteur de films.

Titulaire d’une maîtrise de Lettres Modernes de l’Université de Dakar (Sénégal) et d’un Ph.D. de l’Université d’Illinois (Champaign-Urbana, Etats-Unis), Samba Gadjigo est professeur de français et de littérature africaine à Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts, Etats-Unis).

Il a publié en septembre 2007 Ousmane Sembène : une conscience africaine (Paris: Editions Homnisphères), une biographie autorisée sur le cinéaste et écrivain Sembène Ousmane.
En 2009, il débute avec Jason Silverman le projet de coréalisation du documentaire SEMEBENE! (portrait du cinéaste-écrivain sénégalais).


Fontes / Our Source / Nos Sources (READ MORE / PLUS D’INFOS) :
www.mtholyoke.edu/directory/faculty-staff/samba-gadjigo
www.sembenefilm.com (Galle Ceddo Projects LLC)
mise à jour par Thierno DIA, 01 Fev 2023

Senegalese Academic and filmmaker living in USA.

Samba GADJIGO is an Academic, screenwriter, producer and film director.

Samba Gadjigo (writer/producer/director) is the world’s foremost expert on the career of Ousmane Sembène. His biography
Ousmane Sembène: Une Conscience Africaine (Homnispheres, Paris, 2007), which covers Sembène’s life from his birth in 1923 to the writing of his first book in 1956, will be published in English by the University of Indiana Press in late 2009.
Born and raised in Senegal, Gadjigo joined the faculty of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., in 1986, is former chair of the French Department and member of the African American and African Studies departments. Gadjigo has lectured widely on Sembène and on African cinema, literature and culture at institutions including Harvard and Brown universities. He is director of The Making of Moolaade, a documentary that was shown at film festivals and is available on the DVD of Sembène’s award-winning film Moolaade.

Source : www.sembenefilm.com (Galle Ceddo Projects LLC)


Samba Gadjigo’s research focuses on French-speaking Africa, particularly the work of filmmaker Ousmane Sembene. Gadjigo’s 2015 documentary, Sembene!, co-directed by Jason Silverman, is a biopic focusing on Sembene’s life and work, exploring the themes developed in the biography through interviews and extensive footage from Senegal, Burkina Faso, and France. In 2001, Gadjigo was instrumental in bringing the Senegalese filmmaker to MHC for screenings and discussions of his work.
Sembene! was a finalist for the Camera d’Or in the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, winner of the Jury Prize at the 2016 Luxor Film Festival, winner of the Prix de la Jeuness at the 2017 Escales Documentaires de Libreville, winner of the Paul Robeson Prize at the 2016 Newark Black Film Festival, and recipient of the Prize for Best Documentary at the Emerge Film Festival. In 2017, Gadjigo and Silverman obtained funding through the Ford Foundation, Sundance Institute, and a Kickstarter campaign to hold 130 public screenings of the film in over 38 countries between June 9-11, 2017 for their Sembene Across Africa project.
In 2016, Gadjigo received the Faculty Award for Scholarship in recognition of his « international, multi-disciplinary career-a career throughout which his own story-telling has merged with that of Sembene’s, interweaving African literature, film, history, politics, and indeed these with language and with life itself. »
Gadjigo’s writing has appeared in African Cinema and Human Rights, Research in African Literatures, and Contributions in Black Studies. In an article in African Journal on « Trends in African Cinema, » Gadjigo argues that the future of African cinema is still unclear. « There are very talented individual filmmakers, and some of the works are very sound artistic contributions to world cinema, and yet our screens are still colonialized and one ought to wonder what the future of African cinema will be in the context of a’globalized’ world. »
In addition to his course offerings in the French department, Gadjigo is a member of the Africana Studies program faculty.

Areas of Expertise
French-speaking Africa; African cinema

Education
Ph.D., University of Illinois
M.A., B.A., Université de Dakar, Senegal


Fontes / Our Source / Nos Sources (READ MORE / PLUS D’INFOS) :
www.mtholyoke.edu/directory/faculty-staff/samba-gadjigo
updated by Thierno DIA, 01 Feb 2023