CAMP DE THIAROYE Movie Review

The Camp at Thiaroye

As World War II was coming to an end, black Senegalese troops who had been fighting in the French Army were brought back to Senegal by the French and confined in “transit camps” for what stretched into an interminable and inexcusable period of time. Many of these men—those fortunate enough to have survived the war—had not only been fighting heroically for the French, but had been captured and placed in Nazi prison camps during their service. Now that their usefulness to the French cause was over, however, the system of “transit camps” that the French created soon revealed itself as simply a thinly veiled way of reestablishing the old colonialist formula of white domination. Ousmane Sembène's majestic and moving 1987 epic about a bloody rebellion at one such camp is one of the least-seen but most important of the great Senegalese director's works, and it chronicles a singular event in modern African history about which far too little is written. Co-directed with Thierno Faty Sow.

NEXT STOP … Black Girl, Emitai, Ceddo

1987 147m/C Sijiri Bakaba, Dansogho Camara, Pierre Orma, Ibrahim Sane, Jean-Daniel Simon; D: Ousmane Sembene, Thierno Faty Sow; W: Ousmane Sembene, Thierno Faty Sow; C: Ismail Lakhdar Hamina; M: Ismaila Lo. NYR