Sembene, Ousmane: An accomplished writer before becoming a filmmaker, Sembene is a renowned master storyteller and satirist. Influenced by Third-World revolutionary writers and his involvement with the French Communist Party, Sembene has attacked the exploitation of African workers in Black Girl (1966), government corruption in Xala (1974), and religious persecution in Ceddo (1977). His incisive, allegorical films expose the hypocrisies and injustices of neocolonial power relations, in which the West retains a destructive influence over African governments and societies. Sembene rejects the individualism of Western narrative cinema by stressing the importance of collective solutions to Senegal’s social and political problems, which he believes can come only from the disenfranchised and impoverished masses rather than the bourgeoisie. In order to reach Senegal’s multilingual population and encourage active spectatorship, Sembene emphasizes symbolic and metaphorical meaning over dialogue.
Buñuel, Luis: Throughout his prolific career, Spanish director Buñuel attacked the major institutions of modern European society—fascism, the Catholic Church, and the bourgeoisie—and became one of the great satirists in the history of cinema. Like Hitchcock, Buñuel exposed the perversions lurking beneath the surface of middle- and upper-class propriety. He began his career with a series of surrealist films such as L’Age d’Or (1930), then after a long hiatus moved to Mexico, where he gained acclaim for films such as Los Olvidados (1950) and Él (1952), which combined social realism, black humor, and psychological analysis. In his later career, Buñuel produced his greatest films, Viridiana (1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962), and Belle du Jour (1967), in which characters attempt to escape the hypocrisy, false idealism, and conformity of their lives.
Other major directors: Woody Allen, Shirley Clarke, Brian De Palma, John Frankenheimer, Stanley Kubrick, Joseph Losey, George Lucas, Sidney Lumet, Terrence Malick, Nagisa Oshima, Nicolas Roeg, Martin Scorsese.