The films in this programme offer a series of sensitive and mostly homely portraits. We are drawn into the intimacy of an encounter beyond the mere pictorial representation of a person, and into the materiality of an entire archive: spaces, objects, contexts and details. Victoire Karera Kampire follows the late Alberta Gay with the depth of a woman's gaze in a moving gesture of sisterhood. Johanna Makabi goes back in time to an impossible interview with M'Bissine T. Diop, the actress in Ousmane Sembène's La Noire de… (1966), establishing a cinematic kinship to counter oblivion. The most intimate of these — and yet universally poetic —is Annabelle Aventurin's recording, one video at a time, of her grandmother's fragmented recollections, like an ever-growing, ever more precious collection.

20:30 SCREENING

ALBERTA'S ROOM, VICTOIRE KARERA KAMPIRE, 17' (BE)
English, with English subtitles

Alberta's Room is a journey into the dreams and nightmares of Alberta Gay. The film looks back at a pop icon's tragic fate, exploring a female perspective on a tragedy that has been described as a man's business. Alberta's Room is an experimental film about absence and grief, straddling the border between documentary and fiction.

NOTRE MÉMOIRE, JOHANNA MAKABI, 12' (FR)
French, with English subtitles

Mbissine Thérèse Diop was the lead actress in Ousmane Sembène's first film, La Noire de...  I first saw her face on the silver screen as a young film student of Senegalese origin. Together we look back at her experience as a Black actress in the 1960s.

LE ROI N'EST PAS MON COUSIN, ANNABELLE AVENTURIN, 30' (FR, GLP)
French, with English subtitles

In 2017, Elzéa Foule Aventurin, author of Karukera ensoleillée, Guadeloupe échouée (1980), engaged in a series of interviews with her granddaughter. Together they retrace their family history, sailing from one end of the Black Atlantic to the other. A story of silence, pride and protest.

21:30 Conversation

With Victoire Karera Kampire, Annabelle Aventurin and Johanna Makabi
Moderated by Rosine Mbakam
In French

image: Notre mémoire, Johanna Makabi