CENTENARY OF THE BIRTH OF PAULIN SOUMANOU VIEYRA

Born in Dahomey, now Benin, in 1925, filmmaker Paulin Soumanou Vieyra devoted his life to cinema and film critique. The first African graduate of the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC), he directed his first short film, Afrique-sur-Seine (1955), earning him recognition as the first African filmmaker.
He went on to make around thirty documentaries, including A Nation is Born (1961), Môl (1966), and Iba N’diaye, peintre (1982), as well as one feature film, Under House Arrest (1981). Deeply committed to cinema, he co-founded the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) in Tunis in 1970 alongside Tahar Cheriaa, Ousmane Sembène, and Ababacar Samb Makharam.
As both witness and participant, he published Le Cinéma africain : des origines à 1973 (1975), a landmark work that examines the history and challenges of African cinema. Vieyra passed away in Paris in 1987 and was laid to rest in Dakar, Senegal.
To mark the centenary of his birth, the 36th edition of the Carthage Film Festival pays tribute to Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, a pioneer and builder of African cinema, with the screening of a restored copy of Under House Arrest and «c’était il y a quatre ans».