Directed by Ousmane Sembene, Senegal,

1977. 120 minutes. In Wolof with English subtitles.

Source: New Yorker Films

This film is a national epic that bears the same definitive relationship to its culture that Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, Renoir's La Marseillaise and Eisenstein's Potemkin do to theirs. Ceddo is an exciting political thriller that examines the confrontation between opposing forces in the face of Moslem expansion. The ceddo&emdashor feudal class of common people&emdashcling desperately to their customs and their fetishistic religion. Set loosely in the 19th century, Ceddo is not strictly a historical film. It includes philosophy, fantasy, militant politics and electrifying leaps across the centuries. In this, his most ambitious and remarkable film, Sembene evokes the whole of the African experience.

New Yorker Films:
16 West 61 Street,
New York, NY, 100023
(212) 247-6110
(212) 307-7855