Dakar, Jan 10 (APS) – The launch of activities planned for the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra (1925-1987) will take place on Tuesday, January 21, at the Reflet Médicis cinema, in Paris, APS has learned, Thursday, by Stéphane Vieyra, son of the Senegalese film historian and filmmaker.
A press conference will be hosted on this occasion by Catherine Ruelle, a former journalist from Radio France Internationale, according to a document received from Stéphane Vieyra, the founder of the Paulin-Soumanou-Vieyra Films association.
The film ”Vieyra the precursor”, directed by his son, with the collaboration of the Senegalese director and screenwriter Ndèye Marame Guèye, will be screened at the launch of the filmmaker’s centenary activities.
Participants will also have the opportunity to watch his first film, ”It Was Four Years Ago” (1954).
Other celebrations are planned during this year, including January 31, the day of Vieyra’s birth, which coincides with the official start of centennial activities at the Black Film Center in the US state of Indiana, where another film by him, ”Behind the scenes”, will be screened, according to the same document.
”Unfairly overlooked”
The centenary of the birth of the Senegalese filmmaker will also be celebrated at the Vaulx-en-Velin French-speaking Short Film Festival (France), on January 20, then February 22 and 1is March, at FESPACO, the Pan-African Cinema Festival of Ouagadougou, and next May at the Cannes Film Festival.
A conference dedicated to the work of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra will be held from May 27 to June 6, in Indiana, another also in August in Brazil, according to the same source.
Born on January 31, 1925 in Porto-Novo, Dahomey, now Benin, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, filmmaker, critic and historian of black African cinema, was naturalized Senegalese. Died on November 4, 1987 in Paris, he was buried in Dakar.
Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, considered the precursor of African cinema, is ”unfairly unknown” in Senegal and in Africa, according to the document received from his son.
”Paulin Soumanou Vieyra is an unfairly overlooked precursor,” maintains the latter, believing that, despite ”the enormous work he has had to do, he is not a reference in terms of training”. ”It is not taught. However, he has planned everything, all the documents are there.”
Stéphane Vieyra says he created the Paulin-Soumanou-Vieyra Films association in 2012 to promote the work of this pioneer.
Paulin Soumanou Vieyra left his native country at the age of 10 to continue his education in France. Several years later, he became the first African to graduate from the French Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies. He joined in 1952 and had among his trainers French film theorists, including Georges Sadoul and Jean Mitry.
-After his graduation film, ”It was four years ago”, Vieyra shot ”Afrique sur Seine” in 1955, which marked the beginnings of black African cinema. Mamadou Sarr, Jacques Mélo Kane and Robert Caristan contributed to the making of this film.
At that time, the director began a life entirely dedicated to filming Africa and bringing out African talents from the 7e art.
He was the mentor of several filmmakers, including the famous Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007), to whom he dedicated a book published in 1972, ”Ousmane Sembène, filmmaker (1962-1971)”.
Author of the first African texts on film criticism
Paulin Soumanou Vieyra signed the first African texts of film criticism and published several works, including ”African cinema: from the origins to 1973” (1975) and ”Cinema in Senegal” (1983).
Vieyra has made around thirty documentary films, most of them short films. His only feature film, entitled ”Under house arrest” (1981), is devoted to the mismanagement experienced by several African countries after independence.
From 1956 to 1975, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra headed the French West Africa news service, then that of Senegalese news. As such, he is a witness and guardian of the visual memory of the era. We owe him the archive images of the official ceremonies of the accession of several African countries to independence.
During this period, he participated in the official trips of the Senegalese president, Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906-2001), according to the document received from Stéphane Vieyra.
First program director of the Senegal Television Broadcasting Office, which became RTS in the 1970s, he founded Senegalese national television before becoming a teacher at the Center for the Study of Information Sciences and Techniques in Dakar.
The family of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra offered the late filmmaker’s personal library to the university library of Cheikh-Anta-Diop University in Dakar.
FKS/SBS/AB/ADL/ESF
Related News :