WE 22.09 20:30 VISUAL HISTORIES day 1: The Afrodescendant experience through video

La Machine Avalée, Stéphane Gérard (FR), 2015, 15'

A story of a machine that won't identify itself and produces images that can make you sick and give you nausea. Swallowed by some of the authorities, media makers and cultural dealers, it reproduces its stereotypes and teaches it to generations of young eyes. But not everyone is equal in front of these images. Black French youth can't find any answer to their questions in them. By hiding their reflections in the big cultural mirror, this swallowed machine feeds our anger. Could it actually be working at its own destruction.

Nou voix, Maxime Jean-Baptiste (FR/BE), 2018, 14'

An autobiographical video departing from the participation of Maxime’s father, as a Guyanese figurant in the movie Jean Galmot aventurier (1990), which deals with the history of French Guiana. By re-enacting a part of the film, Maxime and his father try to amplify other kinds of voices.

CoNEC, Eden Tinto Collins & Giuliano Ponturo (GH/FR), 2019, 12'

"Je est ces autres, des corps noirs, égarés en lieux abscons, Abdoulaye, LayLa…Iels, prennent possession de mon je(u), ces personnages hantent et me rappellent à une origine qu’il s’agit d’embrasser, de délivrer."

+ round table discussion in French w/ Eden Tinto Collins, Stéphane Gérard & Maxime Jean-Baptiste

TH 23.09 20:30 VISUAL HISTORIES day 2 : Remixing the supremacy's archives 

Now!, Santiago Alvarez (CU), 1965, 5'

An experimental montage of newsreels and photos pertaining to the struggle of black North Americans against racial discrimination.

My African Mind, Bofa Da Cara, 2010, 6'10’’ 

ΜΑΛΘΑ : The Thrice Burnt Archives of Unreliable Prophecies, Maria Christoforidou, 2021, 15'

The ΜΑΛΘΑ Archive is a video essay that tampers with and speculates on cultural memory. Departing from mainstream Greek imagery and the subsequent hegemonic subjugation of those who do not fit a ‘Greek imaginary’, the ΜΑΛΘΑ Archive works to affirm the presence of people with African descent in Greece, and demonstrates how a fluid identity is shaped by the ‘afterlife of antiquity’

Elle, Gladys Bukolo (BE), 2020, 5’ (première)

Using found footage and excerpts from Ousmane Sembène's La noire de... (1966), Gladys Bukolo builds up a poetic picture of her relation to her own body, to different and alien bodies caught between intimate, public and imagined spaces. 

Fouyé zetwal (eng: Plowing the Stars), Wally Fall, 2020, 13'

On her way to meet her dad, a woman reflects on her life. Along the way, the country looks empty to her and, slowly, memories of past lives are coming back to her. Is it real? Or is it only a dream?

I Ran from It and I Was Still In It, Darol Olu Kae, 11' 

Following the death of his father and the sudden relocation of his children, Kae combines found and original footage to explore how the autobiographical model can potentially extend beyond the personal.

+ round table discussion in English
w/ Gladys Bukolo & Inès Eshun
moderated by Maxime Jean-Baptiste & Stéphane Gérard

photo credit: CoNEC © Eden Tinto Collins & Giuliano Ponturo