The centenary of the birth of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra will be celebrated starting this month of January. At Fesapco, in Indiana or in Brazil, tributes, conferences and various celebrations will be dedicated to this precursor of film criticism in Africa. Par Mame Woury THIOUBOU –
Ouagadougou hosts, for the 29th time, the Pan-African Cinema and Television Festival (Fespaco). But this year also coincides with the centenary of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra. The filmmaker and collaborator of Sembène Ousmane would have celebrated his hundredth birthday this year. Activities are planned to mark the event. Already on January 21, in Paris at Reflet Médicis, the former journalist from Radio France Internationale (Rfi), Catherine Ruelle, will host a launch press conference. According to Stéphane Vieyra, president of the Paulin Soumanou Vieyra films Association (Psv Films), it will also be the occasion for a screening of the film Vieyra the precursor, directed by his son, with the collaboration of the Senegalese director and screenwriter, Ndèye Marame Guèye. But January 31, the day of Vieyra’s birth, will see the official start of centenary activities at the Black Film Center in the American state of Indiana, where another Vieyra film, Behind the Scenes, will be screened, confides his son to the Senegalese Press Agency (Aps). Scheduled from February 22 to March 1, the Ouagadougou Pan-African Cinema Festival will also take the time to pay tribute to this African personality. Other celebrations are planned throughout the year. Notably at the Vaulx-en-Velin French-speaking Short Film Festival (France). From May 27 to June 6, a conference devoted to the work of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra will be held in Indiana, another also in August in Brazil, according to his son Stéphane Vieyra.
Born on January 31, 1925 in Porto-Novo, Benin, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, filmmaker, critic and historian of black African cinema, was naturalized Senegalese. “Paulin Soumanou Vieyra left his native country at the age of 10 to continue his education in France. Years later, he would be the first African to graduate from the French Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies (Idhec), today La Fémis, which he joined in 1952 and where he had Georges Sadoul and Jean Mitry as teachers. . After his graduation film It was four years ago, he then shot Africa on Seine in 1955, a cult film which marked the beginnings of black African cinemas. Thus begins for Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, a life entirely devoted to filming Africa, to working for the emergence of African talents like the great Senegalese filmmaker, Ousmane Sembène, and to signing the first African texts of film criticism,” indicates a document shared by Psv Films. Among the works he wrote, African cinema: from the origins to 1973 (1975) and Cinema in Senegal (1983). Died on November 4, 1987 in Paris, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra rests in Dakar, his adopted home.
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