VISUAL LIBERATION: A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF FOUR CINEMATIC RADICALS - How the French New Wave and African Third Cinema Converge
(clockwise from top left to right) François Truffaut, Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambéty, and Jean-Luc Godard
by Dennis Leroy Kangalee
Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, pioneers of the French New Wave, and Djibril Diop Mambéty and Ousmane Sembène, key figures in African cinema, all revolutionized filmmaking by rejecting conventional storytelling and pushing cinema as a tool for political and artistic expression. However, while Godard and Truffaut challenged the formal constraints of commercial cinema from within a European, film-literate tradition, Mambéty and Sembène used cinema as an urgent vehicle for decolonization and African identity. This special essay is a simple map to begin to understand why these filmmakers were/are important and how form follows function in each filmmaker’s reach for human transcendence…or revolution. Sometimes both.
“We are done. I’m not speaking only about us here in Africa but of humanity, of man... The feeling I have is that we are done for if we have traded our souls for money.”
*Djibril Diop Mambety, the darker side of Senegal's coin (Ousmane Sembene reflecting the lighter side, but no less political) is the director of masterworks such as “Touki Bouki” and “Hyenas”, the only features he ever made. His work is taut, unrelenting and shaded with funereal satire. A radical in every way, he never pretended that life was getting any better and he never looked away from the problems inherent in his own life, Senegal, colonialism and the world at large.
There are very few people on this planet who see cinema as a liberation tool. Instead, it is fair to say as Mambéty lamented, that we have sold ourselves out...and for nothing in return except the specter of shadows and awards from the spectacle. All that seek to keep one enslaved. In this Brave New World, we not only accept this- we want this!
And while these Visigoths have obviously won - knowing full well the impact cinema could have on future liberation politics – it is important to remember the filmmakers who express the perversion of the mirror we look into. Warped surfaces reflect our obscene desires and most heartfelt delusions. A mirror fractured is war itself, internal and external. The great filmmakers dealing with the triumphs and tragedies of life do not look away. And as different and as varied as Godard, Mambéty, Sembène, and Truffaut’s output – they remain at their core – concerned humanists who detest and celebrate aspects of human behavior and human society.
Similarities
Breaking Cinematic Conventions
○ Godard & Truffaut:
In one sense, the Lennon & McCartney of European cinema, both Godard and Truffaut brought a contemporary context and feel to movies, a sensual and youthful rebellious attitude that was in concert with both jazz and rock & roll. Partially instigated by the filmmaking of rebel artist Agnes Varda, who is considered the mother of the French New Wave with her insistence on fusing actors, non-actors, real locations, and the struggles of every day life; she was never interested curious about the people in power, only “the rebels, the people who fight for their own life.” Her rejection of Hollywood mores exhibits this. And she made films when Godard and Truffaut were still only film critics.
This is an interesting point. Tired of Hollywood and the dead establishment movies, film critics and writers decided the best way to critique others' films is to actually make a film. And miraculously, they did. An unofficial communal group, The French New Wave rejected Hollywood’s polished narratives, and embraced jump cuts, improvisation, and self-reflexivity. They derogated plot to find something human instead. Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) introduced deeply personal, character-driven storytelling, while Godard’s Breathless (1960) shattered editing norms with its jump cuts and existential coolness. Already their mythic personas were being developed: Truffaut, the romantic; Godard, the cynical philosopher.
Amiri Baraka and Jean-Luc Godard circa 1967
○ Mambéty & Sembène:
These two geniuses, similarly, re-created and contextualized what cinema was, but with a greater sense of urgency and danger. Sometimes literally because their films led the decolonialist revolution in cinema, the way Aime Cesaire had instigated a radical anti-colonialist poetry and concept of “Negritude” - aligning Black people throughout the diaspora; in some way if Varda influenced Godard and Truffaut, one could say the same about Cesaire’s mammoth influence on Mambéty & Sembène , among others like Frantz Fanon, the Martinician doctor and revolutionary philosopher.
Mambéty & Sembène rejected the classical storytelling imposed by colonial cinema: both Hollywood and European cinema, which were expressions of the ruling class or the bourgeoisie in the very least. The traditional styles and vocabulary of Hollywood (a clever colonizing machine) were either completely upended by these two filmmakers in a draconian way or were destroyed altogether so that new forms/ideas could replace them. Look no further than at Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973), a dreamlike, fragmented odyssey through Senegal, and like Breathless – it disrupted linear storytelling. Sembène, more grounded in realism and “humanistic” approach like Truffaut, used simple, powerful narratives such as his 1966 film Black Girl (an obvious influence on Haile Gerima’s Bush Mama years later) – to attack racism and neocolonial oppression.
2. Cinema as Political Resistance
○ French New Wave: Godard, especially, became increasingly political, using films like Weekend (1967) to attack bourgeois society and capitalism, while Truffaut, though less radical, critiqued authority and hypocrisy in films like The 400 Blows. He then pursued a more emotionally complex form of movies that explored the dynamics of interpersonal relationships whereas Godard became more politically radical and by 1967 considered himself a revolutionary filmmaker concerned with the working-class struggle and the internationalist fight against colonialism.
○ African Cinema: Sembène is called the “father of African cinema” because he created a distinctly African voice in film, using cinema to educate and mobilize against colonialism. Xala (1975) exposed the failures of post-independence African leadership. Mambéty, more poetic and allegorical, also critiqued postcolonial Africa, portraying youth lost between tradition and modernity, and the viciousness of capitalism such as displayed in his (my opinion) 1992 masterpiece, Hyenas (an exquisite adaptation of German playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt's satire The Visit). The film is an excoriation of neo-colonialism, consumerism and capitalism.
3. Low-Budget, Guerilla Filmmaking
○ This is an interesting counterpoint. Although all four worked with limited resources, filming on location, using non-professional actors, and improvisation, their films generally always feel raw and immediate, heightening their political and artistic impact. But whereas Godard and Truffaut were dealing with the
“Film business” and still had access to middle class and rich backers, Sembène and Mambéty had to work much harder to collate monies for their projects. This is why, in particular, where Godard - although a genius - made too many movies, Mambéty - just as visionary - made far too little. However, he never complained about this. And it is also why when he did make a movie it almost had to be brilliant because it was always a rare opportunity.
CHARTING THE DIFFERENCES:
Why They Were Unique
● Godard & Truffaut revolutionized the aesthetics of film, influencing directors worldwide, and establishing the idea that film was not only a true art, but a personal one. Even their weakest movies contain something alive and rebellious.
● Mambéty & Sembène didn’t just revolutionize form; they created an entirely new cinematic identity for Africa, refusing to adopt Western storytelling models and instead rooting their films in African reality and folklore. There is no “white gaze,” there is no attempt at even considering the West when making their films. They poured on a specific Black African gaze and a particularly radical view.
In short, all four were cinematic revolutionaries, but where Godard and Truffaut sought to reinvent cinema intellectually, Mambéty and Sembène made it an act of cultural and political liberation.