[2] He was often credited for his work in the French style as Sembène Ousmane, which he seemed to favor as a way to underscore the "colonial imposition" of this naming ritual and subvert it.

[5] In 1944, during World War II and after the Fall of France, Sembène was drafted into the Senegalese Tirailleurs (a corps of the French Army).

He joined the communist-led CGT and the Communist party, helping lead a strike to hinder the shipment of weapons for the French colonial war in Vietnam.

[citation needed] Though Sembène focuses particularly on the mistreatment of African immigrants, he also details the oppression of Arab and Spanish workers.

He is an ambitious black Senegalese farmer who returns to his native Casamance with a new white wife and ideas for modernizing the area's agricultural practices.

was an international success, and Sembène received invitations from around the world, particularly from Communist countries such as China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

Though the charismatic and brilliant union spokesman, Ibrahima Bakayoko, is the most central figure, the novel has no true hero except the community itself.

From 1962 to 1963, Sembène studied filmmaking for a year at Gorky Film Studio, Moscow, under Soviet director Mark Donskoy.

[7] With the 1965 publication of the novellas Le mandat, précédé de Vehi-Ciosane (The Money Order and White Genesis), Sembène's emphasis began to shift.

Just as he had once attacked the racial and economic oppression conducted by the French colonial government, with these works, he turned his attention to the corrupt African elites who followed during independence.

[8] Sembène continued this theme with the novel Xala (1973), the story of El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, a rich businessman.

On the very night of his wedding to his beautiful, young third wife, El Hadji suffers impotence ("xala" in Wolof), and believes it to be caused by a curse.

Samba Gadjigo notes that his influence reached audiences beyond Africa, "Of Sembène's ten published literary works, seven have been translated into English".

[9] By contrast, the Nigerian pioneer writers Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka wrote their works in English, which eased their recognition beyond Nigeria.

The Senegalese release of Ceddo was strongly censored, ostensibly for a problem with Sembène's paperwork, though some critics suggest that this censorship had more to do with the government's interpretation of what could be considered anti-Muslim content in the film.

[10][11][12] Sembène resisted this action by distributing fliers at theaters describing the censored scenes, and he released the film uncut for the international market.

The film, set in a small African village in Burkina Faso, explored the controversial subject of female genital mutilation.

[22] Seipati Bulane Hopa, Secretary General of the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), described Sembène as "a luminary that lit the torch for ordinary people to walk the path of light...a voice that spoke without hesitation, a man with an impeccable talent who unwaveringly held on to his artistic principles and did that with great integrity and dignity.