Paulin Soumanou Vieyra: imposing his voice within an imposed value system

Abstract

The contribution of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra to Senegalese cinema, whilst innovative and precocious, has been eclipsed by that of Ousmane Sembène. The latter elaborated a prolific body of work that distanced itself from the thematic and aesthetic preoccupations of Western Cinema, articulating a militant tone that was in keeping with the tenets of Third Cinema ideology. However, the cultural engagement of Vieyra was to remain in Sembène's shadow in the landscape of the newly independent Senegal in the 1960s and this article aims to address this oversight. The term "cultural engagement" may seem antiquated given that the very act of making films necessitates cultural mediation but Vieyra's films delineated a form of militantism firmly anchored in the politics of that era. Indeed, it is impossible to dissociate his cinema from the prevailing nationalist ideology of the newly-found state given that he directed twenty-five films, seventeen of which were documentaries, in his capacity as Minister for Information in Senegal. Vieyra succeeded in elaborating a political message in his films but with a populist twist, an exploit which few Third Cinema filmmakers achieved. Two of his documentaries from the beginning of this decade, Une nation est née (1961) and Lamb (1963), will be analyzed in order to showcase this engagement through the prism of text, production, and reception.