Whose land is it anyway?
What contestations over land in urban Senegal tell us about political economy in the post-colony.
Senegal
Loving, living, and communal duty
Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s directorial debut is not only a love story about two star-crossed individuals, but about the whimsical landscapes of the place where they fall in love.
Underground politics under Senghor
In the 1970s, young left-wing activists fought clandestinely for Senegal’s democratization under Senghor’s brutal regime.
Reading List: David Tonghou Ngong
Ahead of the publication of his new book on Leopold Senghor and African political theology, the author selects books that inspired his writing process
Sweet beauty
In Senegal, women's bodies are weaponized as political objects in electoral battles.
Keeping the narrative straight
Although Senegal’s protests are riven with contradictions, they testify to its people’s willingness to defend their democratic rights and freedoms.
A slow emancipation
What peanut trading in late 19th century Senegal tells us about the fine line between slavery and freedom.
The empire of words
The fiction of Senegalese writer and filmmaker Khady Sylla not only used speech to create worlds and ways of being in the world, but used speech as a world and a character in its own right.
An invitation to join a pilgrimage
If a better world is possible, let us meditate on its constituent parts—the institutions, communities, and relationships, argues Felwine Sarr.
Emancipation that costs servitude
Filmmaker Khady Sylla amplifies the voices of and gives visibility to the domestic workers tending to the homes of Africa’s middle classes.
Where the spirits conquer her
The Senegalese director, Safi Faye’s classic 1996 film, Mossane, is a love tragedy and a spiritual quest in Sereer land.
The colonial wounds of Senegal’s girlchild
In ‘Black Girl’ (1966) and ‘Cuties’ (2020), M'Bissine T. Diop is a cautionary figure who warns of colonialism's wounds and afterlives for Black girl belonging in the present day.
The land doesn’t lie
Safi Faye's 1976 film, 'A Farmer's Love Letter,' exposes the gap between the post-colonial state and the concerns of ordinary people.
To create or to perish
The last film of underappreciated Senegalese director, Khady Sylla dealt with mental health. It is worth revisiting it now for its groundbreaking portrayal of depression suffered by two women friends.
Mothers and mothering
Director Alice Diop’s 'Saint Omer' is preoccupied with what binds women together, the traumas that are inherited, shared and possibly overcome.
The labor of land
In order to better resist contemporary, neocolonial accumulation, we need to historicize land grabs in Africa.
Sembene’s Africa is everyone’s Africa
If someone had to hold the title of father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembéne would be the most compelling candidate.
The haunting draw of the West
To be African means at some point to desire to leave. African cinema can provide solace for our tortured relationship to the West and our own continent.
The body in flight
The 14th edition of the Dakar Biennale puts up the first significant survey of Senegalese artist El Hadji Sy’s work in the city.
Omar Blondin Diop and Issa Samb’s Senegal
Activist Blondin Diop and artist Samb are exemplars of Senegal’s post-independence promise and crisis, marked by the global uprisings of May 1968. Mustapha Saha was a friend to both of them.