Senegal / 1982 / 80mins / Drama / Wolof

Senegalese filmmaker Ababacar Samb-Makharam said, “‘Jom’ is a Wolof word which has no equivalent in English or French. ‘Jom’ means courage, dignity, respect… It is the origin of all virtues.” To celebrate the concept, Samb-Makharam uses the griot (oral historian) as the nexus of multiple stories drawing from Senegal’s collective memory. To inspire striking workers, the griot tells of a legendary prince, Dieri Dior Ndella, who sacrificed his life during colonialism, and Koura Thiaw, an entertainer who took up the cause of oppressed domestics in the 1940s, with both becoming heroes to their people.

Ababacar Samb-Makharam

Ababacar Samb-Makharam, director of Jom, The Story of a People, was born in Dakar, Senegal, in 1934 and trained as an actor at the Centre d’Art Dramatique de la rue Blanche in Paris. From 1959 to 1962 he studied filmmaking at the Centro Sperimentale in Rome, after which he returned to France and worked as an assistant director in television. On returning to Senegal, Samb worked as a cameraman for Senegalese TV news. In 1965 he made his first film, Et la neige n’etait plus / There Was No Longer Snow, followed by Kodou (1971). Samb served as the Secretary General of the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) from 1971 to 1977. He passed away in October 1987 at the age of 52 in Dakar, Senegal. Learn More