Freelance journalist (w/ BBC, Radio France, magazines), passionate about Africa, Europe, literature, music, arts, I work with Raoul Peck on his next film projects. Born in Paris, I have been based in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi (covering Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia) and Bristol, UK. Travelled to Italy, Haiti, Balkans/Caucasus, Tunisia, Liberia, South Africa, India, Mexico, Niger, Turkey, Iraq... This blog is to share thoughts and cultural discoveries from around the world.
I feel the greatest thing about this sequel is... the chance to get excited about seeing the "first" Blade Runner in the first place!!
Here is a video report inside the set, by a Vice reporter:
Inside the Making of 'Blade Runner 2049' | Created with Blade Runner 2049
Published on 21 Sep 2017
The original 'Blade Runner' broke barriers in the world of special effects when it premiered in 1982. Now, the creators behind 'Blade Runner 2049' are going even bigger. VICE toured the sequel's set with the folks who brought it to life, speaking with the production designer, producer, and director Denis Villeneuve to see how it all got made. Then, we talked to the film's stars—including Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling—about what it was like living inside such a surreal world.
National Bestseller
Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary
To compose his stunning
documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, acclaimed filmmaker Raoul
Peck mined James Baldwin’s published and unpublished oeuvre, selecting passages
from his books, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as
incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been. Weaving these texts
together, Peck brilliantly imagines the book that Baldwin never wrote. In his
final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated
friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal
notes for the project have never been published before. Peck’s film uses them
to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s private words with his public
statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America.
This edition contains more
than 40 black-and-white images from the film.
« Ce que les Blancs doivent faire, c'est essayer de trouver au fond d'eux-mêmes pourquoi, tout d'abord, il leur a été nécessaire d'avoir un "nègre", parce que je ne suis pas un "nègre". Je ne suis pas un nègre, je suis un homme. Mais si vous pensez que je suis un nègre, ça veut dire qu'il vous en faut un. » James Baldwin.
Dans ses dernières années, le grand écrivain américain James Baldwin a commencé la rédaction d'un livre sur l'Amérique à partir des portraits de ses trois amis assassinés, figures de la lutte pour les droits civiques : Medgar Evers, Malcolm X et Martin Luther King Jr. Partant de ce livre inachevé, Raoul Peck a reconstitué la pensée de Baldwin en s'aidant des notes prises par l'écrivain, ses discours et ses lettres. Il en a fait un documentaire – salué dans le monde entier et sélectionné aux Oscars – aujourd'hui devenu un livre, formidable introduction à l'oeuvre de James Baldwin. Un voyage kaléidoscopique qui révèle sa vision tragique, profonde et pleine d'humanité de l'histoire des Noirs aux États-Unis et de l'aveuglement de l'Occident.
« Attention, chef-d'oeuvre ! »La Croix (au sujet du film documentaire I Am Not Your Negro)
Raoul Peck’s stunning
look at the civil rights era ends up as the writer’s presumptive autobiography,
but it gets there via an unexpected route
Raoul
Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro has a “written by James Baldwin” credit
in its opening sequence. At first this seems like a polite tip of the hat to
the author, essayist and public intellectual who died nearly 30 years ago. Soon
we realize this is an accurate statement of fact. Each line of the narration
that permeates the film is taken directly from one of Baldwin’s texts or
letters. His words dominate the archival clips as well.
It in no
way diminishes Peck’s work as a film-maker to suggest that Baldwin’s ideas and
personality are the author of this movie. It is a striking work of
storytelling. By assembling the scattered images and historical clips suggested
by Baldwin’s writing, I Am Not Your Negro is a cinematic séance, and one of the
best movies about the civil rights era ever made.
Eschewing
talking head interviews, Peck’s documentary ends up as Baldwin’s presumptive
autobiography, but it gets there via an unexpected route. During the final
years of his life, Baldwin was researching a book he planned to call Remember
This House. It would profile three assassinated civil rights leaders: Medgar
Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. He intended it to be a personal work,
as he knew each of these men, and telling their stories would likely be a
springboard to tell his own story at a more advanced age.
Beginning
with Baldwin’s pitch to his agent, we link to touch points with the slain men,
hopping through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s personal essays with his public
statements. (As with last year’s wonderful Best of Enemies,
I Am Not Your Negro excerpts from the Dick Cavett show. I can only imagine a
documentary about him is headed our way soon.) The entirety of Baldwin’s
written and on-camera oeuvre eventually mixes down to a roux, and while Peck
uses the occasional chapter break, the effect is more of a Chris Marker-like
cine-essay than typical Frontline-like reporter’s documentary. (Though they
both focus on the topic of race in America, I Am Not Your Negro is quite the
opposite of ESPN’s justly celebrated OJ: Made In
America.)
Peck
occasionally takes advantage of some of Baldwin’s more prophetic passages to
flash-forward through time. Images from Ferguson, the Obama inauguration and
the dross of daytime TV aren’t there so much to say “see, he was right?” as to
make us realize the timelessness of his greater arguments. Baldwin did much of
his best writing about America while living as an expatriate, and this
outsider’s perspective (shared by Peck, who is from Haiti) brings with it a
tremendous amount of clarity. I Am Not Your Negro’s specifics are only
intermittent, like reporting on different reactions between white and black
audiences during Sidney Poitier films. By and large this film concerns itself
with the greater philosophy of why groups in power behave the way they do. This
might be the only movie about race relations I’ve ever seen that adequately
explains – with sympathy – the root causes of a complacent
white American mindset. And it took a black writer and director to do it.
The
narration is done by Samuel L Jackson, and it’s one of the best things he’s
done in years. No offense to the many boldfaced names who swoop into a
recording booth to lend their voice and celebrity to a well meaning
issue-oriented documentary, but what Jackson does here is give a performance.
He doesn’t exactly mimic Baldwin, who we see in many of the archival clips, but
he does much more than read words on the page. (I didn’t even realize it was
him until the closing credits.) We live at a time when almost every notable
person from the 20th century has a documentary about them streaming somewhere.
That’s all well and good if they are about someone whose work you fancy. I Am
Not Your Negro isn’t a special interest title, it is a film.
-
I Am Not Your Negro
review – astonishing portrait of James Baldwin's civil rights fight
4/5stars
Raoul Peck dramatises the
author’s memoir of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and Medgar Evers, in this
vivid and vital documentary
Raoul
Peck’s outstanding, Oscar-nominated
documentary is about the African American activist and author
James Baldwin, author of Go Tell It on the Mountain and The Fire Next
Time. Peck dramatises Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This
House, his personal memoir of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and civil rights
activist Medgar Evers, murdered by a
segregationist in 1963. Baldwin re-emerges as a devastatingly
eloquent speaker and public intellectual; a figure who deserves his place
alongside Edward Said, Frantz Fanon or Gore Vidal.
Peck puts
Samuel L Jackson’s steely narration of Baldwin’s words up against a punchy
montage of footage from the Jim Crow to the Ferguson eras, and a fierce
soundtrack. (It’s incidentally a great use of Buddy Guy’s Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues, which never
sounded so angry or political.) There is a marvellous clip of Baldwin speaking
at the Cambridge Union Society, and another on the Dick Cavett Show – the host
looking sick with nerves, perhaps because he was about to bring on a
conservative intellectual for balance, whom Baldwin would politely trounce.
Baldwin has
a compelling analysis of a traumatised “mirror stage” of culture that black
people went through in 20th-century America. As kids, they would cheer and
identify with the white heroes and heroines of Hollywood culture; then they
would see themselves in the mirror and realise they were different from the
white stars, and in fact more resembled the baddies and “Indians” they’d been
booing.
The film
shows Baldwin refusing to be drawn into the violence/non-violence difference of
opinion between King and Malcolm X that mainstream commentators leaped on, and
steadily maintaining his own critique – although I feel that Peck’s
juxtaposition of Doris Day’s mooning and crooning with a lynch victim is a
flourish that approximates Baldwin’s anger but not his elegance. There is a
compelling section on Baldwin’s discussion of dramatist Lorraine Hansberry,
author of A Raisin in the Sun. It is vivid, nutritious film-making.
Ma chronique de ma rencontre avec Tricky, présentée par Hervé Pernette de Indiepoprock :
Quand une spécialiste de la scène de Bristol rencontre une icône de Bristol, ça ne peut se passer que sur Indiepoprock ! Merci Melissa Chemam !
Tricky en chronique et interview
Spécialiste de la scène musicale et artistique de Bristol, Melissa Chemam, auteure de l’ouvrage “En dehors de la zone de confort : de Massive Attack à Banksy” aux éditions Anne Carrière, nous avait fait l’honneur au début de l’été de rédiger un article sur le bouillonnement créatif constant de la ville anglaise.
En ce mois de septembre, Tricky, éminent représentant de cette fameuse scène musicale de Bristol, publie son treizième album, “Ununiform”. Alors, quand on nous a proposé de le rencontrer lors de son passage parisien dans le cadre de la promo de ce nouvel album, c’est tout naturellement que nous avons demandé à Melissa si elle serait partante pour réaliser l’interview et la chronique, ce qu’elle s’est empressée d’accepter, pour notre plus grand plaisir. Le résultat de cette rencontre, le voici dans notre rubrique “Chroniques”.
Pour rappel, tous les articles de Melissa Chemam, qui ne traite pas seulement de musique, sont à retrouver à l’adresse ci-dessous :
Lors d’une rencontre à Paris, le Bristolien de légende nous parle de son amour pour le chiffre 13, de Berlin et de la chanteuse Polly Harvey...
Par Mélissa Chemam
Un jour qu’il allait prendre l’avion depuis Los Angeles, où il vivait au milieu des années 2000, Tricky a fait un rêve qui mêlait le chiffre 13 et la chanteuse Polly Jean Harvey… Une fois à l’aéroport, la compagnie aérienne lui attribue le siège 13A et il voit ensuite arriver une frêle jeune femme qui prend place à ses côtés : je vous laisse imaginer de qui il s’agissait !
Polly et Tricky ont enregistré ensemble un de ses plus beaux singles, Broken Homes, paru en 1998 sur l’album “Angels With Dirty Faces”. « Et je retravaillerai avec elle dès que possible », insiste-t-il, très enthousiaste. « C’est une des plus grandes artistes que j’ai rencontrées. Elle a complètement transformé la musique. Tout le monde devrait posséder au moins son premier album. Elle est aussi douée que Kate Bush ou Jimi Hendrix ». Un duo improbable pour l’époque, réunissant deux genres, deux musiciens, totalement différents.
Tricky a toujours eu un côté visionnaire, comme de nombreux musiciens, mais aussi comme de nombreux sorciers du trip-hop, de Björk à James Lavelle. Il revient cet automne avec un treizième album, intitulé “Ununiform”, comprenant justement treize titres.
« J’ai toujours eu un lien fort avec le chiffre 13 », me raconte-t-il lors de notre entretien à Paris, dans un hôtel à l’allure cinématographique, qui ne manque pas de faire penser aux couloirs du clip deKarmacoma, titre enregistré avec Massive Attack en 1994 qui l’a rendu célèbre dans le monde entier. La pluie a cessé cet après-midi et un rayon de soleil humide fait scintiller sa veste de cuir recouverte d’une peau de bête… Tricky est de bonne humeur. « Mon oncle habitait au numéro 13 de notre rue à Knowle West, à Bristol, et sa maison a été le lieu familial le plus joyeux de mon enfance », ajoute-t-il. L’enfance tragique du prodige de Bristol a été longuement documentée par les journalistes et nous en avions largement parlé lors de notre précédent entretien, en février 2015, au Bataclan. Un sujet qu’il a lui-même abordé dans nombre de ses albums dont son premier, “Maxinquaye”, sorti en 1995, qui porte le nom de sa mère disparue lorsqu’il avait seulement quatre ans, ou encore l’avant-dernier, “Knowle West Boy”, du nom de son quartier d’origine.
Mais aujourd’hui, le chiffre 13 vient annoncer une tout autre phase de sa vie. « C’est mon chiffre porte-bonheur ». Ce disque a été composé à Berlin, où Tricky vit depuis deux ans. « Une ville qui me fait du bien », explique-t-il. « Je ne sors pas pour y clubber ou fumer, mais pour marcher, regarder les gens faire du vélo, trouver une certaine paix. Parfois j’y passe des jours à errer sans parler à personne. Je passe la plupart de mon temps seul ». Et cela s’entend largement dans certains titres, notamment The Only Way , une douce ballade que l’artiste chante, pour une fois, en solo.
Même ambiance sur le très beau Running Wild, interprété par la jeune Mina Rose, une Londonienne. « Je l’ai entendue sur Soundcloud et elle m’a envoyé des essais par email », raconte Adrian Thaws (de son vrai nom), « j’ai tout de suite aimé ce que j’ai entendu et je lui ai répondu électroniquement avant de l’inviter en studio. Quand je travaille sur un morceau, ou quand j’écoute une nouvelle musique, je sais toute de suite ce que j’aime, je n’ai pas besoin de le retravailler des jours, ou de le ranger pour le tester plus tard, je sais tout de suite ». Une spontanéité et un ancrage dans le moment présent qui a sûrement permis au producteur / rappeur de durer dans une industrie en constante évolution. Aujourd’hui, c’est avec son propre label, False Idols, qu’il se distribue et produit de jeunes artistes.
L’album contient aussi des duos avec le jeune rappeur Scriptonite (sur le très inspiré Blood of my Bloodnotamment), un rap en russe de Smoky Mo (sur Bang Boogie) comme des featurings de ses fidèles chanteuses Francesca Delmonte (pour New Stole) et Martina Topley-Bird (pour le superbe When We Die, qui clôt l’album). Autre surprise : une reprise de Doll de Hole avec Avalon Lurks…
En résumé : un treizième album, en 22 ans de carrière, aussi hétéroclite que son producteur. « Je suis passé de la rue à des promos d’album complètement folles du jour au lendemain », se souvient Tricky, « au début cela me semblait normal, je devais suivre les règles, mais je n’ai jamais aimé les promotions… Aujourd’hui, je fais de la promo seulement et parce que j’ai mon propre label. Je fais ce que j’aime, c’est tout ».
“Ununiform” sort le 22 septembre en France et Tricky reviendra sur scène en Europe en novembre ou décembre, après une tournée aux Etats-Unis.
Bansky criticised the Barbican Centre for hosting a Basquiat exhibition after years of suppressing graffiti on its walls... In its own way:
These two murals appeared this past weekend near the art centre, in London.
-
According to The Guardian:
The murals, inspired by the upcoming Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at the centre, were confirmed as genuine on the artist’s verified Instagram account.
Announcing the new artworks in a series of posts on Instagram, Banksy said: “Major new Basquiat show opens at the Barbican – a place that is normally very keen to clean any graffiti from its walls.”
The first image, which is possibly mocking the exhibition, as Basquiat was originally a graffiti artist, is of a ferris wheel with people queueing up at a ticket booth underneath. Crown motifs, common in some of Basquiat’s art, replace the wheel’s passenger cars.
The second post is captioned: “Portrait of Basquiat being welcomed by the Metropolitan police – an (unofficial) collaboration with the new Basquiat show.”
In the second mural, which is clearly inspired by Basquiat’s Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump – one of his most famous artworks – Banksy has portrayed police officers searching and questioning the boy figure as the dog looks on.
It is perhaps a comment how Basquiat, who was one of the first famous black American artists, would be treated if he was working today, given how black people are still much more likely to be targeted for stop and search than white.
The exhibition, which is the first large-scale UK show of Basquiat’s pioneering neo-expressionism, opens on Wednesday at the arts centre. It will feature more than 100 works alongside rare photography, film and archive material.
Revelations about the wealthy buying citizenships confirm a sorry truth: the migration door, closed to the poor, swings open to those with vast fortunes
Alfama, Lisbon. ‘Portugal’s ‘golden visa’ scheme lets non-EU citizens gain full residency and unfettered travel rights across the 28 EU nations by spending €500,000 on a Portuguese property.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
In our regression from liberal aspiration to the brutal realities of Trump and Brexit, one of the nirvanas set aside has been the notion of a world without borders. “America first,” says the president. “Britain first and always,” chant the Brexiters. The majority demand is for migration curbs in principle, even if they are unlikely to be achieved in practice. The global village will be refashioned with barbed-wire fencing. And yet in this, as in most things, money talks.
From a list of names leaked to the Guardian, we now know that the Cypriot government has raised more than €4bn since 2013 by providing citizenship to the global super-rich, giving them the ability to live and work throughout the EU in exchange for a cash investment. We know that among those who have availed themselves of this right are billionaire Russian oligarchs and Ukrainians accused of corruption. For the financially well-endowed, the deal is a bit of a steal: the Cypriots merely ask for €2m in property or €2.5m in company or government bonds.
But need you bother with Cyprus? Not necessarily. If you are of high net-worth and your wish is to fast-track your way to a British passport, a visa can still be yours, and citizenship too, under our modified version of the same arrangement. All we ask is for a £2m investment. You can buy citizenship in Greece for €250,000, while Portugal’s “golden visa” scheme lets non-EU citizens gain full residency and unfettered travel rights across the 28 EU nations by spending €500,000 on a Portuguese property.
Or pitch wider: for $350,000 obtain a Grenadan visa and with it, through reciprocal agreements, access to more than 100 countries. Migrants battle their way over land and sea, hoping to do the same. They have been badly advised. Perhaps they should stay put, play the lottery and hope to buy their way in.
This is about much more than bureaucracy. It’s about a political philosophy only available to those who can afford to put it into practice. The very rich, the high net-worthers, don’t just see themselves as opportunists using their fortunes to gain themselves maximum flexibility. They see themselves as nomads for whom borders and nationality have little significance. I watched them parsing their philosophy and prospects at a conference at London’s Savoy hotel last year aimed at showing the super-rich how to maximise their mobility. They were keenly aware of the currents around them: the burgeoning nationalism, the migrant crisis, the jibe from Theresa May that “citizens of the world” equate to “citizens of nowhere”. But none of that will or should restrict you, they were told, because you are really very rich.
Under the chandeliers of the Savoy’s Lancaster room, Eric Major – chief executive of citizenship specialists Henley & Partners – urged his audience of “internationally minded, globally connected, financially well endowed citizens” to tread boldly. Forget the notion of nations as special entities, he said. They’re just like clubs. If one doesn’t work, join another. The poster boy for this, he said, was Ahn Hyun-soo, the South Korean speed skater who fell out with his country’s sporting authorities and without a qualm availed himself of Russian citizenship. He became known as Viktor, adored by the public, feted by Putin. That, we were told, “is the direction of things”.
There is much to be said for a world shorn of divisive nationalism and for the idea that people can reinvent themselves in new lands, with new possibilities. My family are in the UK because a Jamaican carpenter sailed from Kingston to Southampton, leaving his loved ones behind for any future he could foresee, to achieve that same metamorphosis. But that was different. The right he claimed was widely available, not just for those with bulging pockets.
Should we be troubled by this? We know the rich are around us. We know they are different. And the high net-worthers, with their investments, do – in return for a passport, perhaps a portfolio of passports – pump money into the economies of countries that need it. In these years of austerity, that may well mean us in Britain. Certainly it applies to Greece, still struggling to stave off bankruptcy, and Grenada, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the Caribbean.
And one cannot say global high net-worthers look the other way as low net-worthers struggle and ordinary migrants risk life and limb to reach affluent countries. Henley & Partners donates more than $1m to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to help its work with migrants. It sees itself as a global citizen, an “ideal citizen”. Providing a fiscal contribution to compare with the physical contribution made by my father and millions like him.
But in this era of rampant inequality, isn’t there something nauseating about rich entitlement set against the numerous, heart-rending tales of penniless striving? Try listening to the pleas of people desperate for a passport, not because they want easy passage through an airport or seek business advantages, but because to stay put means repression and possible death. Listen to the concerns of EU citizens who risk losing their status because of Brexit. Then listen to wealthy global citizens boasting of how they buy their way to mobility.
Consider, too, the risks inherent in laying out a red carpet for anyone rich enough to pay for it. In 2015, when complaints about our offer to high net-worthers led the British government to tighten diligence checks on who was applying and make it more difficult for them to plough funds into property for their own rather than societal advantage, applications plummeted. Be wary of high net-worthers’ romantic notion of a world without borders. The benefits aren’t mutual, and the super-rich don’t like too many questions asked.
•Hugh Muir is associate editor of Guardian Opinion
Nichola Wong's latest short depicts an alienated office worker who turns to a touch therapist for comfort. It "examines our obsession with electronic devices that promise to be a gateway to new connections, but may end up causing a fatal disconnect" Read more on NOWNESS - http://bit.ly/1WFogpV
Mémoire de l’esclavage : « Débaptisons les collèges et les lycées Colbert ! »
TRIBUNE
A l’initiative de Louis-Georges Tin, président du CRAN, et du philosophe Louis Sala-Molin, plusieurs personnalités signent une tribune afin que le nom de Colbert, ministre de Louis XIV et acteur de la légalisation de l’esclavage, soit retiré de l’espace public.
Par LOUIS-GEORGES TIN président du Conseil représentatif des associations noires de France (CRAN), LOUIS SALA-MOLINS philosophe
La statue du général Lee est enlevée à Dallas, au Texas, le 14 septembre 2017. REX CURRY / REUTERS
Tribune. Tous les médias ont parlé de Charlottesville, de la statue du général Lee, de la « white supremacy », etc. Mais rares sont ceux qui ont évoqué ce problème dans le contexte français. Or la question des emblèmes esclavagistes dans l’espace public se pose également dans notre pays. Elle est formulée depuis au moins trente ans par des citoyens – qu’ils viennent de l’outre-mer ou non – qui demandent que ces symboles soient retirés.
Cette exigence suscite chez certains de nos compatriotes une certaine angoisse : jusqu’où, disent-ils, faudra-t-il aller ? La réponse est claire : on ne pourra sans doute pas modifier tous les symboles liés à l’esclavage dans l’espace public, tant ils sont nombreux et intimement liés à notre histoire nationale. Mais on ne peut pas non plus ne rien faire, en restant dans le déni et dans le mépris, comme si le problème n’existait pas. Entre ceux qui disent qu’il faut tout changer et ceux qui disent qu’il ne faut rien changer, il y a probablement une place pour l’action raisonnable.
On pourrait, par exemple, se concentrer sur les collèges et les lycées Colbert, qui existent dans plusieurs villes de France. Il s’en trouve à Paris, à Lyon, à Marseille, à Reims, à Thionville, à Tourcoing, à Lorient, à Rouen et dans quelques autres villes. Pourquoi Colbert ? Parce que le ministre de Louis XIV est celui qui jeta les fondements du Code noir, monstre juridique qui légalisa ce crime contre l’humanité. Par ailleurs, Colbert est aussi celui qui fonda la Compagnie des Indes occidentales, compagnie négrière de sinistre mémoire. En d’autres termes, en matière d’esclavage, Colbert symbolise à la fois la théorie et la pratique, et cela, au plus haut niveau.
Histoire, mémoire et transmission
Ceux qui sont attachés à Colbert à tout prix, et veulent retenir de lui non pas l’esclavagiste, mais le ministre qui sut établir la grandeur de l’économie française à l’époque, agissent comme ces gens, quelque peu douteux, qui affirment qu’ils célèbrent en Pétain non pas le représentant de Vichy, mais le vainqueur de Verdun. C’est un argument quelque peu délicat. Par ailleurs, comment Colbert a-t-il développé l’économie française au XVIIe siècle, si ce n’est sur la base de l’esclavage colonial, justement ?
Mais pourquoi évoquer particulièrement les collèges et les lycées ? Parce que la question posée aujourd’hui est justement celle de l’histoire, de la mémoire et de la transmission. Si l’école républicaine elle-même renonce à ces valeurs, elle n’a plus lieu d’être. Comment peut-on sur un même frontoninscrire le nom de « Colbert », et juste au-dessous, « Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité » ? Comment peut-on enseigner le vivre-ensemble et les valeurs républicaines à l’ombre de Colbert ?
Certains commentateurs affirment qu’il ne faut pas changer ces noms, car il convient de conserver la trace des crimes commis. Mais les noms de bâtiments ne servent pas à garder la mémoire des criminels, ils servent en général à garder la mémoire des héros. C’est pour cela qu’il n’y a pas en France de rue Pierre-Laval, alors qu’il y a de nombreuses rues Jean-Moulin. Et si on veut vraiment sauvegarder la mémoire de l’esclavage, il vaudrait mieux donner à ces établissements les noms de ces héros, noirs ou blancs, bien souvent méconnus, qui luttèrent contre l’esclavage. On pense ici à des figures comme Delgrès, le héros de la Guadeloupe, ou aux habitants du village de Champagney (Haute-Saône), qui, pendant la Révolution, plaidèrent pour l’abolition. Pour ce qui est de Colbert, il faut bien sûr que son action soit enseignée – à l’intérieur de ces établissements, dans les cours d’histoire – mais non pas célébrée – à l’extérieur, sur les frontons.
Reconnu comme crime contre l’humanité
Votée à l’unanimité en 2001, la loi Taubira demande que l’esclavage soit reconnu comme crime contre l’humanité, et enseigné en tant que tel. A l’évidence, les collèges et les lycées Colbert sont au minimum en porte-à-faux par rapport à cette loi, et par rapport aux valeurs républicaines qu’ils se doivent de transmettre. Par ailleurs, en outre-mer et dans l’Hexagone, plusieurs rues ou bâtiments ont été débaptisés ces dernières années. En 2002, par exemple, la rue Richepanse, à Paris, qui célébrait ce général ayant rétabli l’esclavage en Guadeloupe, est devenue la rue du Chevalier-de-Saint-George, pour rendre hommage à ce brillant musicien et escrimeur du XVIIIe siècle. Ce changement, qui constitue une sorte de jurisprudence, a été effectué sans problème majeur.
C’est pourquoi, dans le cadre de cette rentrée 2017, nous, citoyens, professeurs, élèves, parents d’élèves, demandons au ministre de l’éducation nationale d’engager une réflexion, en concertation avec les personnalités qualifiées, les associations, les syndicats et les établissements concernés, afin que les symboles qui célèbrent Colbert dans ces institutions éducatives soient remplacés par d’autres noms qui valorisent plutôt la résistance à l’esclavage. C’est aussi cela, la réparation à laquelle nous appelons le ministre de l’éducation nationale.
Signataires : Christophe d’Astier de la Vigerie (éditeur), Fritz Calixte (philosophe, directeur du journal « Haïti Monde »), Isabel Castro Henriques (historienne), Juliette Chilowicz (secrétaire générale de la Fédération indépendante et démocratique lycéenne), Christine Chivallon (anthropologue), Catherine Clément (philosophe), Rokhaya Diallo (journaliste, documentariste), Didier Epsztajn (rédacteur en chef du site Entre les lignes, entre les mots), Mireille Fanon-Mendès-France (ancienne présidente du groupe d’experts de l’ONU sur les personnes d’ascendance africaine), Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (philosophe), Victorin Lurel (ancien ministre des outre-mer), Jacques Martial (directeur du Memorial ACTe), Harry Roselmack (journaliste), Patrick Silberstein (directeur des Editions Syllepse), Michel Surya (directeur des Editions Lignes), Lilian Thuram (footballeur)
Filmmaker Raoul Peck puts writer and social critic James Baldwin back into the frame.
Stephanie Bunbury
Filmmaker Raoul Peck loved films as a child, but ''suddenly, in that world you thought you were part of, [you realise] you are just a footnote''. Photo: Jacky Ghossein
Four out of the five contenders for Best Documentary at this year's Oscars were made by black directors. That was fortuitous, given the controversy raging about lack of diversity in Hollywood, but it wasn't planned.
"It was just pure chance," says Raoul Peck, whose astonishing film I Am Not Your Negro was among the five. "The Oscars are about films that have been made already, when the big problem is who decides which films are made, who gets green lit. Four out of five: that is just bizarre. But it's not substantial. It's not structural. Nobody has done anything to make that happen." Nothing, in other words, has really changed.
The question of whether anything much has changed runs like fuel through I Am Not Your Negro, which is both inspired by and pays tribute to the writer, political activist and public intellectual James Baldwin. Baldwin's novels Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953) and The Fire Next Time (1963) were two of the great literary companions to the civil rights movement of the '60s; an intervening novel Giovanni's Room (1956) is a classic of gay literature. Baldwin, who died in 1987, was witty, incisive, angry, articulate and cool; to see him demolish a conservative opponent on Dick Cavett's chat show is to be reminded of a time when people talked seriously about things that mattered on prime-time entertainment shows. In that respect, things probably have changed.
What remains very much the same is the police violence against African-Americans castigated by Baldwin in his chat-show answers, his galvanising speeches to student bodies and in his writings. In I Am Not Your Negro, Peck alternates Baldwin's own with the voice of actor Samuel L. Jackson performing his words to underscore footage of recent Ferguson and #blacklivesmatter demonstrations, making inescapable the parallels between then and now.
Among archival material in I Am Not Your Negro is this shot of civil rights protesters facing state troopers in Selma on March 7, 1965. The day became known as Bloody Sunday. Photo: Spider Martin
"That is the crazy part of it," says Peck. "He wrote those things 50 years ago and they're even stronger today. Because you know what he says? 'You cannot hide the truth any more'."
Raoul Peck was born in Haiti in 1953. After his father had been imprisoned by the Duvalier dictatorship, his family moved to the Congo. He has strong memories of military roadblocks both in Port-au-Prince – "I remember being in my pyjamas in the back of the car, and my mother driving through the city trying to find where my father was" – and in Congo, where there were frequent rebellions followed by army crackdowns.
"It was always about how does the conversation go?" he told National Public Radio in the US last year. "You need to give the right answers to the questions, and depending on the answer you gave, you know, you could be arrested as well."
His early travels, he believes, gave him his perspective on the world. "I would not believe the propaganda they were feeding me in one country because I knew the reality in another. I'd see an American politician talking about democracy when in my country they were supporting the worst dictatorship ever. So you start to ask questions."
James Baldwin, centre, is the inspiration for I Am Not Your Negro. Photo: Magnolia Pictures
He now lives in France; his previous films include a documentary about his home country's 2010 earthquake, Fatal Assistance, and two features, Lumumba and Sometimes in April, about the Rwandan genocide. Along with the Baldwin film, which has been an ongoing project over 10 years, he recently finished The Young Karl Marx, a dramatic interpretation of Marx's life and thinking.
"I was always privileged because I came to cinema though politics, through my civil engagements," he says. "I never do any movie because I have some extraordinary idea. Cinema was always something that had to do with my life. Marx and Baldwin: they are both people who shaped me, so to engage in projects related to their work is like giving back to a younger generation something essential that changed my life. I never saw myself as a film-maker who wants to tell stories."
The young Raoul Peck was a big reader and avid film fan, but he was always aware that the stories he was imbibing were not about him. "When you are not coming from, let's say, the very Eurocentric way of seeing the world," he says, "you look to film, books or sometimes music and suddenly, in that world you thought you were part of, [you realise] you are just a footnote. It's not your story."
And if he wasn't the footnote, he was the enemy. "Like Baldwin says in the film, he was rooting for Gary Cooper until he realised that Gary Cooper was killing the Indians and the Indians were him. And that is what most people in the Third World grew up with. We always had to deconstruct what they were showing us."
Reading Baldwin, he felt he was at last seeing his own world and being seen in it. He still has his teenage collection of Baldwin books; they are, he told Toronto's Globe and Mail, underlined almost from beginning to end. Everything spoke to him.
For I Am Not Your Negro, he had access to a vast amount of material in Baldwin's estate, including unpublished manuscripts. Among them he found Remember this House, a recollection of his political comrades Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. Assassinated within five years of each other, they all died before they were 40. Baldwin had told his literary agent in 1979 that he planned to write a book about them in which their lives "would bang against and reveal each other as they did in life", but he had only written 30 pages of it when he died.
"Having this document in my hands, for me as a filmmaker, it was like having an incredible mystery book," Peck told Globe and Mail. "This book needed to be not finished, but found. So my theory was that he wrote it already, and my job was to find it through his body of work." I Am Not Your Negro is so forceful not least because there are no qualifying interviews with friends, family members or observers about its subject; we just hear Baldwin speaking to us directly, either through his writings or from the archives.
Once a literary celebrity, Baldwin's star had waned by the time he died. Sidelined politically by the rise of Black Power militants such as Eldridge Cleaver (for whom Baldwin's frank homosexuality was an issue), he was no longer a go-to television commentator. Gradually, his novels disappeared from bookstores and academic syllabuses. For Raoul Peck, however, he was a constant presence, his mentor when times were tough.
"There is a reason why we are pushing him out," says Peck. "My obligation was to put him back, because I was seeing people even quoting him now without saying it's him." Giving a voice to black narratives, he says, is as urgent as ever. "And he did it not only from the point of view of a black man or a black gay man, but from a very humanistic point of view.
"Because what he writes is not just for black people. It is even more important for white people, because he teaches them this is your history, you need to own this history. You can't pretend to live in a world like this and say you are innocent. Walls were made in your name, discrimination was made in your name. The price of comfort and security is very heavy."
I Am Not Your Negro opens on September 14 and screens at ACMI until November 1.
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