“Modern Days, Ancient Nights” celebrates thirty years of filmmaking by African filmmakers – a period begun with the release of Ousmane Sembène’s extraordinary, ground-breaking short film Borom Sarret. Of course, other Africans had already made films, both in Europe and in Africa, but there was something about this simple yet elegant tale of a cart driver that seemed to promise in each and every image the emergence of a new vision that had until then been unknown in world cinema. The subsequent work of Sembène only confirmed that promise; he is the true “father of African cinema,” and for this reason we dedicate this program—on the occasion of Mr. Sembène’s 70th birthday—to him.

Looking over the list of films included in this series, two developments are immediately striking. First, “African cinema” is each year evolving into a continent-wide phenomenon, not just the product of two or three nations. With international co-production—often combining two or three African producers with foreign partners becoming more and more the order of the day, films and filmmakers are reaching out both thematically and stylistically to audiences across Africa, not just in a particular country or region.

Second, emerging African filmmakers have increasingly looked to earlier “generations” of African films and filmmakers as sources of inspiration. Today’s young African filmmakers are as aware of and influenced by artists such as Souleymane Cissé, Djibril Diop Mambéty, and Ousmane Sembène as they are by non-African filmmakers—a sign, perhaps, that African cinema does indeed have a tradition, a history, from which new works will now emerge. There is no film movement which holds more promise for the future.

Modern Days, Ancient Nights: Thirty Years of African Filmmaking was organized by THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER and the AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL. Programs from this series are also shown at THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM.
THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER: Joanne Koch, Executive Director; Richard Peña, Program Director; Trisha Hanger, Director of Development; Joanna Ney, Director of Public Relations : Kathleen Murphy, Staff Writer; Isa Cucinotta, Film Coordinator.
AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL: Mahen Bonetti, Maureen Slattery. Special thanks for their invaluable assistance to Manthia Diawara, Mamadou Niang, Sharan Sklar, Nicole Kekeh, Carol Thompson, Luca Bonetti, William C. MacKay and Hilary Ney.
Programs at THE BROOKLYMN MUSEUM were organized by Dara Meyers-Kingsley, Coordinator of film and Video Programs.