"Ceddo is not a tribe, it is a state of mind." -- Ousmane Sembène
Banned in Senegal on an absurd technicality, Ceddo, Sembene’s most ambitious film, uses the story of a beautiful princess’s kidnapping to examine the confrontation between opposing cultural forces: Muslim expansion, Christianity, and the slave trade. The “Ceddo”—or feudal class of common people—cling desperately to their customs and their fetishistic religion amidst the impending changes. Nominally set in the nineteenth century, Ceddo ranges far and wide to include philosophy, fantasy, militant politics, and a couple of electrifying leaps across the centuries to evoke the whole of the African experience. Ceddo is in many ways Sembene’s most daring film stylistically and his most provocative in terms of the issues that it raises, issues involving the slave trade, religious colonization (both Christian and--especially--Islam), and modes of resistance.
The film is set in the dry coastal region south of Dakar (the film was shot around the town of Mbour) in some unstated time in the past, anywhere between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. As happens in many stories, the film opens with the disruption of the status quo--Dior Yassine, the daughter of the king--has been kidnapped by a group of ceddo. The ceddo are members of a traditional, polytheistic, feudal, warlike Wolof culture that has come under increasing pressure from Islamic and European influence. Under the influence of Islam, matriarchal inheritance patterns (inheritance through mother and sister) are giving way to patriarchal patterns (inheritance from father to son); tradition and tolerance are giving way to Islamic law and forced conversion.
We soon realize that in fact that the status quo was disrupted long before the kidnapping occurred. The king (played by the same actor who played Dieng in Mandabi) and his closest advisors and family members have converted to Islam and fallen under the sway of the Muslim Imam, an outsider whose goal it is to move all the ceddo away from their traditional ways. The kidnapping of the princess is an attempt by the ceddo to get the king to cease his support of the Imam. In addition, another disruptive influence has entered this society--the European slave trader and his silent partner, the Catholic priest (their nationality is unclear, probably either French or Portuguese). In fact, one of the first actions that we see in the film is an African bringing in two slaves to exchange for a musket. Traditional ceddo culture is thus under attack by the twin forces of religious imperialism and the lure of Western commodities and technology. The status quo will not be restored simply by the return of the princess.
In responding to these threats, the ceddo, led by old Diogomay, fall back upon their traditional means of resistance. Diogomay comes to the king bearing the Samp, the ceremonial staff that is used when a ritual challenge has been issued, as it is here. The young kidnapper has been designated as the Champion for the ceddo, and he is prepared to enter into single combat with any Champion the king chooses to designate. However, as we shall see, traditional strategies can no longer work, or at least they are effective only so long as everyone plays by the rules of ceddo chivalry, The film ends in a final, successful (and inspiring) act of resistance, but we know that we are witnessing the passing of an age.
Still, we cannot discount the inspirational importance of resistance and refusal in Ceddo. As occurs so often in Sembène’s films, a woman becomes the embodiment of resistance, here in the person of the proud, beautiful princess, Dior Yassine. She is perhaps modeled after another Lingeer (princess) of the late seventeenth century named Yaasin Bubu, a very popular figure in the "Marabout Wars." Another important figure is the king’s nephew, Madir Faim Fall, who renounces Islam, which he had taken on for his own convenience, as well as his status as a royal; rejects the lure of Christianity; begins to wear the traditional cowry shells and embraces traditional fetishes of his people; assumes the life of a simple ceddo, even if that means having to share their fate of defeat and slavery.
The film is told in a slow, stylized, almost ritualistic manner, which feels entirely appropriate to the subject matter. The dialogue is formal and declamatory, with characters often speaking through intermediaries. The setting too seems both very real and quite abstract. We see the counterpoint between two settings, the village (space of slavery and colonialism) and the bush where the princess is being kept (space of heroism and tradition). It is interesting to notice the role of the two griots (bards) in these two spaces-- Jaraaf the noble, powerful spokesperson for the king, and Fara, the humble companion to the kidnapper. When the princess returns from the bush to the village, she is a changed person, and perhaps so are we.
The straightforward narrative is disrupted at least twice the film. The king’s nephew, Madir Faim Fall, who has rejected Islam and lost his traditional prerogatives, goes to the Catholic mission, perhaps in hopes of an alternative. Instead, he has a vision of the future which takes the form of a cinematic flash-forward to contemporary times (with himself as bishop and the Imam among those taking communion). It’s a bit jarring, but it makes sense, as does his rejection of that alternative. We also get a kind of "imaginary flashback" just before the end, when the princess imagines an alternate world in which she served the heroic kidnapper. Another "unrealistic" element in the film is the use of gospel music whenever we see the slaves. Again, this juxtaposition makes perfect sense.
Ultimately, Sembène’s goal in this film is not to provide historical accuracy or realism. As Françoise Pfaff put it, "Ceddo is a mythic rather than purely realistic recreation of the past." The history of the entry of Islam into West Africa is a complex one; in some cases it involved forced conversion, in other cases it was accomplished by eager acquiescence. Ceddo includes traces of the Marabout Wars of the seventeenth century, but it also includes references to resistance figures from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is a fictional, constructed past.
Sembène wants us to look at the past only to the extent that this will help us to analyze the present. He will do what he can to prevent us from becoming so absorbed in the story, so immersed in this past time, that we fail to ponder the relevance of these issues to our time. The stylized action, the often incongruous music, are part of his attempt to distance us a bit from the story’s illusions, He has insisted that his is not an anti-Islam film, or an anti-Catholic one for that matter. He wants us to look clearly at the acts that were done in the name of Islam, in the name of Christianity, but were really all about power and selfishness and greed. He also feels that we cannot understand the present if we do not understand the complicity of Africans in the slave trade. The film shows clearly some of the mechanisms of slavery, how and why Africans (including ceddo with whom we sympathize) are willing to sell their brothers, their sisters, and their children. How else can we understand the situation in Africa today?
Sembene.Ousmane.-.Ceddo.1976.DVDivX.VoSTFr-ADREFLO.avi 
In Wolof with harcoded French subtitles
