Ababacar Samb Makharam

Ababacar Samb Makharam (also Ababacar Samb-Makharam or Samb for short, Dakar, Senegal, 1934 – Dakar, 1987) was a Senegalese filmmaker, actor, screen writer and film producer with his own company Baobab Films.

Biography
Born in Dakar, Samb Makharam was a pupil of the Navy school Centre de Formation Professionnelle de la Marine de Dakar in 1950–1951 and worked in a law firm (1952–1953). He then left for Paris in France and attended the École française de radioélectricité Rue Amyot (1954–1955, now EFREI Paris). From 1955 up to 1958 Samb Makharam trained as an actor at the Centre d’Art Dramatique de la Rue Blanche in Paris and performed in the movies Tamango (1957) directed by John Berry and Les Tripes au soleil (1958) by Claude Bernard-Aubert.

In 1955 he founded the Paris theater group Les Griots uniting various Antillean and African actors such as Timité Bassori, Toto Bissainthe, Robert Liensol (fr) and Sarah Maldoror. From 1959 to 1962 Samb Makharam was a cinema student film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Film Centre) in Rome, after which he travelled in the United States for further study (1962–1963). He returned to France to join the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF) as an assistant director for television. On returning to Senegal in 1964, Samb Makharam worked for the Ministry of Information there, was a cameraman with the Senegalese TV news, and served as a director and producer at Radio Sénégal (Dakar). In 1965 he directed his first feature film Et la neige n’etait plus / There Was No Longer Snow, followed by Kodou in 1971. Samb Makharam served as the Secretary General of the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) from 1971 to 1977. He pioneered a new style with a timeless role for the traditional Senegalese griot in his 1982 movie Jom ou L'Histoire d'un Peuple (Jom or the History of a People).

In October 1987 Samb Makharam passed away in Dakar at the age of 52.

Theater
Between 1955 and 1964 Samb Makharam performed as an actor in various productions of his Paris theater group Les Griots:

Filmography
Samb Makharam's films include: