“France Noire/Black France” Film Festival
La Présence Noire en France/The Black Presence in France
May 21- 23, 2010
Location: Forum des Images
www.forumdesimages.fr
Forum des Halles – 2, rue du Cinéma
75001 Paris
The “France Noire/Black France” Film Festival is a showcase for films that focus on the historical and contemporary experiences of people of African descent in French society. In recent years, France has seen exciting developments and inspiring activity in the artistic, cultural, intellectual, political, religious, and social realms of those who identify themselves and are identified as “Les Noirs de et en France.” Individuals and collectives have brought greater public awareness to issues ranging from the memory of slavery and silenced postcolonial experiences to integration and social equality, questions that are central to what we refer to as:“La Présence Noire en France/The Black Presence in France.”
Paris, in particular, has long been a magnet for artists, intellectuals and social activists of African descent, as beautifully illustrated by the Négritude and Harlem Renaissance movements, embodied by an array of extraordinary women and men from the 1920s through the 1950s. Their myriad manifestations of socio-political engagement and cultural expression have been richly documented in film.
The twenty-first century has witnessed a new wave of scholarship on “Blacks” in Europe and new theories of “blackness” in the African diaspora relative to French and European societies. Meanwhile, the impact of the African American or “Black” American experience in Paris and in France remains a topic of intense interest and debate.
Through this Festival, we seek to bring into sharp visual relief the differing representations and lived realities of individuals and communities, exploring complex questions from multiple perspectives. We also aim to promote and draw necessary light to a hugely important, though largely under-exposed, cinematic genre that focuses broadly on “Blacks” in France and the shifting cultural and social terrain that they have shaped in the metropole and territories identified and/or understood as being part of France.
The “France Noire/Black France” Film Festival is designed to attract a broad and diverse audience in order to contribute to the strengthening of international, cross-cultural, and cross-generational understanding of the themes and issues examined in these films.
Coordonnées:
En France :
Professeurs Trica KEATON, Arlette FRUND, Maboula SOUMAHORO
Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall
4, rue de Chevreuse
75006 Paris, France
Email: trica.d.keaton@vanderbilt.edu, frunda@wanadoo.fr, maboula.soumahoro@gmail.com
Aux Etats-Unis
T. Denean SHARPLEY-WHITING
Distinguished Professor of French and African American and Diaspora Studies
Director of W. T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies
Director of Program in African American and Diaspora Studies
2301 Vanderbilt Place
Box 351516
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37235-1516
Email: t.sharpley-whiting@Vanderbilt.Edu
Get information about the pre-event at the US Embassy, how to get to the venue, the sponsors, and Euzhan Palcy.
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Is it considered like black history month in France , like what we have in America>
http://www.sangambayard-c-m.com
Black History month in the UK is in October, but as far as I know there is
no Black History month in France. If someone knows different please let me
know!
I like to think that May in France is Black History Month because May 10 is Slavery Remembrance Day. There is definitely nothing official about the month, but people tend to plan a lot of Black history events in this month. It would be nice if France had a month though.
Thanks Kiratiana!