The Black Experience in French Cinema – Film Festival and Conference

Organized by Isabelle Boni-Claverie (French film director, screenwriter, visiting professor at NYU in Spring 2019) and Frédéric Viguier (Institute of French Studies, GSAS)

Presented by Institute of French Studies and Cinema Studies

APRIL 11 – COMING TO TERMS WITH THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE

The first film ever made by black people, Afrique sur Seine, was directed in 1956 by a group of African students in France, at a time when Paris still was the capital of the French colonial empire. Focusing on the first Congress of Black Writers and Artists held in 1956 in Paris, Lumières Noires stands in sharp contrast with Afrique sur Seine. This documentary retraces the challenging attempt to develop a theory of emancipation common to black men and women from Africa, the Caribbean and the United States of America against colonial and racist oppression.

When Euzhan Palcy, the first black female film-maker in France, made her directorial debut in 1983,  she revisited the colonial era in the French West Indies. So did Claire Denis, whose first film Chocolat explored her position as the daughter of French colonists in Africa. Representing the black experience required the deconstruction of representations shaped by colonialism.

Screening 1 – 12:00-2:00 p.m.
Location: La Maison Française of NYU, 16 Washington Mews
Afrique sur Seine (Africa on the Seine), short film by Paulin Vieira, Mamadou Sarr and Melo Kane, 1955 (21 min.)
Lumières Noires (Black Lights), documentary by Bob Swaim, 2006 (52 min.)
Followed by Q&A with Rich Blint

Screening 2 – 3:00-5:30 p.m.
Location: La Maison Française of NYU, 16 Washington Mews
Rue Cases Nègres (Sugar Cane Alley), feature film by Euzhan Palcy, 1983 (103 min.)
Followed by Q&A

Screening 3 and panel discussion – 6:00-9:30 p.m.
Location: NYU Cantor Film Center, 36 East 8^th Street
Chocolat (Chocolate), feature film by Claire Denis, 1988 (105 min.)
Introduction and Q&A with Isaach de Bankolé
Panel: How does one move beyond colonialism through both cinematic and professional practice? What was the image of Black people in France at the time? Were Euzhan Palcy and Isaach de Bankolé too early for the French movie scene? How has their career in the United States allowed them to redefine themselves? Is legitimacy constructed differently in the United States?
Moderated by Isabelle Boni-Claverie (screenwriter and director). With Isaach de Bankolé (actor), Alice Diop (director) and Lydie Moudiléno (University of Southern California)

APRIL 12 – FILMING RACE AND GENDER IN THE HOUSING PROJECTS

They were the grand-children of the former colonized; their parents were immigrants; they were still called the second generation even though they were born in France. Conditionally French, relegated far from the city centers in the ghettos of the Republic, they invented a new urban identity, fed by rap music and American cultural references.

The first film about the housing projects was directed by Mathieu Kassovitz in 1991. Although he was a white middle-class film-maker, who didn’t live in the projects, his movie La Haine became a cult movie and founded a movie genre that dictated representations of the black experience in France. Two decades later, rap artist Abd Al Malik followed the rules of the genre to subvert it. As for film-maker Alice Diop, she chose to distance herself from the genre in her César-awarded Vers la Tendresse, and deconstruct stereotypes about the boys of the housing projects, their sexuality and their skills.

Screening 1 – 12:00-2:00 p.m.
Location: Michelson Theater, Department of Cinema Studies, 721 Broadway, 6th Floor
Les Misérables, short film by Ladj Ly, 2017 (15 min.)
La Haine (Hate), feature film by Mathieu Kassovitz, 1991 (98 min.)

Screening 2 – 3:00-5:30 p.m.
Location: Michelson Theater, Department of Cinema Studies, 721 Broadway, 6th Floor
May Allah Bless France, feature film by Abd Al Malik, 2014 (95 min.)

Screening 3 and panel discussion – 6:00-9:30 p.m.
Location: NYU Cantor Film Center, 36 East 8^th Street
La Mort de Danton (Danton’s Death), documentary film by Alice Diop, 2011 (40 min.)
Vers la tendresse (Towards Tenderness), documentary film by Alice Diop, 2016 (64 min.)
Q&A with Alice Diop
Panel: Between American tropism, rap influences and fascination for gangster films, how does one propose representations of young black people that escape stereotypes? Two to three decades after the pioneer Euzhan Palcy, what is the situation of the new generation of black directors?
Moderated by Ed Guerrero (NYU). With Alice Diop (film-director) and Trica Keaton(Dartmouth).

APRIL 13 – NEW INTIMACIES ACROSS THE RACIAL LINE?

Colonization and racial segregation have been associated with violent sexual policies: while black women’s bodies were made available to or raped by white men, white women’s bodies were strictly prohibited to black men. In Melvin Van Peebles’ first film in 1968, the black U.S. army man stationed in post-colonial France therefore saw the possibility of having a relationship with a white woman as an ultimate form of freedom. But on both sides, is the desire for interracial sex and romance exempt of racial stereotyping? Set in 1969 Paris, the gallantries in Ivorian director Désiré Ecaré’s A Nous Deux, France! referred to self-dispossession. What is the situation in today’s France when interracial relationships now seem fully accepted? Civeyrac’s 2014 feature movie My Friend Victoria explores the subtle and enduring racial and class underpinnings of interracial relationships.

Screening 1 – 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Location: NYU Cantor Film Center, 36 East 8^th Street
A Nous Deux France (Let’s Measure Up, France!), feature film by Désiré Ecaré, 1969 (59 min.)
First screening ever in the USA. Followed by Q&A.

Screening 2 – 12:00-2:00 p.m.
Location: NYU Cantor Film Center, 36 East 8^th Street
The Story of a Three-Day Pass, feature film by Melvin Van Peebles, 1968 (in English)
Followed by Q&A

Screening 3 and panel discussion – 2:30-6:00 p.m.
Location: NYU Cantor Film Center, 36 East 8^th Street
Pour la Nuit, short film by Isabelle Boni-Claverie, 2004 (26 min.)
Mon amie Victoria (My friend Victoria), feature film by Jean-Paul Civeyrac, 2014 (95 min.)
Panel: Forbidden for black men and white women, limited to white men and black women, sexual and romantic relationships between Black and Whites during the colonial era reflected gender- and race-based domination. How has the end of colonization affected these strict rules? Does interracial sex signal the end of race, or does it reproduce old patterns in intimate settings?
Moderated by Frédéric Viguier (NYU). With Cécile Bishop (NYU), Isabelle Boni-Claverie(screenwriter and film director), Sandrine Collard (Rutgers)

All films in French with English subtitles unless otherwise specified. All panels and Q&As in English.

Read participant bios.

Co-sponsored by Department of French Literature, Thought, and Culture, Institute of African American Affairs, Center for French Language and Cultures.
With the support of NYU’s Office of the Provost – Global Research Initiatives, NYU Center for the Humanities, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, La Cinémathèque Afrique – Institut Français.
Partners: AfroPunk and Ubikwist.

From La Maison Française NYU