2023-11-13 14:31:55
Honorary Oscar in 2022, first woman to win a César… the Center Pompidou celebrates the Martinican director, by retracing her committed work. Meeting with this (too) little-known pioneer of French cinema.
Euzhan Palcy at the Center Pompidou, September 2023. Photo Hugues Lawson Body
Published on November 13, 2023 at 3:31 p.m.
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Behind his jovial smile, Euzhan Palcy, whose journey the Center Pompidou is highlighting – and in his presence – through a retrospective until November 19, hides an impressive cinematographic record. First female director to receive a César in 1984 for Rue Case-Nègres, first black filmmaker to be produced by a major American studio for her adaptation ofA white and dry season (1989) dealing with apartheid in South Africa, second French woman to receive an honorary Oscar in 2022… The Martinican artist, who fought for better representation of black people in cinema, is not at short of ideas. Among her projects, a film on the anti-slavery activist Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803) which she hopes to see produced in France.
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An honorary Oscar for Frenchwoman Euzhan Palcy, so little-known in France
How did your interest in cinema begin?
As a child, I went to the cinema every Sunday after high mass. I saw every possible religious film there: The ten CommandmentsAttila, the scourge of God… One day, I saw a feature film that shocked me, in which a black man, wrongly accused of raping a girl, flees for fear of being lynched. After the session, I cried. I was hurt and angry. I almost never saw black people on screen and the only times they appeared were in demeaning roles… I was fed up! Yet there was a thirst to see each other. When I was young, as soon as a film came out and a black person starred in it, even in a lousy role, the entire population went to the cinema (laughs). Except that in Martinique there was no production company or training for actors. This is why, in Rue Case-Nègres, my actors are 95% amateurs. Darling Légitimus (in the role of M’Man Tine) and Douta Seck (Médouze) had already filmed, but I found and trained all the others.
“Rue Cases-Nègres”, by Euzhan Palcy (1983). Photo René Marran/JMJ International Pictures
To realize A white and dry season, you went to investigate in South Africa, in Soweto…
André Brink’s book was somewhat incomplete. It is not negative but, for example, we can read “We tortured him,” without further details. What torture? How ? For me, it didn’t make sense not to show reality. So I went to Soweto thanks to an eminent surgeon and friend of Nelson Mandela who prepared my visit. I entered under a false identity, I pretended to be a singer looking for polyphonic voices for my next album. This surgeon used to “patch up” abused adults and children. He knew what these people had been through. So I met them to collect their testimonies. I recorded everything on a cassette tape that was the size of a cell phone. To leave South Africa, I had to put the tape in my pants and secure it with adhesive tape. I took very small steps to prevent her from falling (laughs).
In 2005, you made the documentary Journey of dissidents on the West Indian resistance fighters. Their action was only recognized by the State four years later, in 2009, in particular thanks to you…
I put aside all my other projects for four years to make this documentary. I refused to allow these people, who would soon die given their age, to go unrecognized. Our compatriots in France are unaware of the sacrifice made by certain Martinique fathers. In secret, they told their son: “You have to go, France is in danger. Don’t tell your mother, she’ll stop you from leaving. » With my camera, I don’t just film, I try to repair the wounds created by History.
Peaceful demonstration by students in Soweto in “A White and Dry Season”, by Euzhan Palcy (1989). Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios
According to an American journalist, you refused nearly two hundred projects in the United States…
It’s the Venice Film Festival, where was selected Rue Case-Nègres, which launched my career in 1983. Afterwards, people in Hollywood saw the film and called me directly. At first I didn’t want to go, it was Robert Redford who convinced me. Working with American studios is far from being easy, but I must admit that they left me alone for my first films. I had the final cut [le choix du montage final, ndlr] d’A white and dry seasonof Combat de Ruby Bridges (1998) and of The Killing Yard (2001). Afterwards, things changed. The new generation that arrived no longer had any curiosity or respect for black people. I was told that “blacks and women are not bankable”, et people called me to offer me films in which there wasn’t even a single slightly tanned character! It was borderline insulting. This is why, during my speech at the Oscars [en vidéo ici]I asserted that, if“blacks and women are bankable”. We had to tell them.
It is thanks to Aimé Césaire that ‘Rue Case-Nègres’ was born.
In 1994, you produced a documentary trilogy dedicated to Aimé Césaire (“Aimé Césaire, a voice for history”), whom you greatly admire…
In the preface to Notebook of a return to the native countryAndré Breton writes: “The words of Aimé Césaire, beautiful like nascent oxygen. » I find that very fair. I discovered it very young because I had a cousin who recited entire poems by Césaire. We drank his words. I didn’t understand everything, but that didn’t matter, because you don’t just have to read his work, you have to say it and listen to it.. That’s why I filmed it. It is also thanks to Césaire that Rue Case-Nègres came about because he contributed financially to the film.
Retrospective “Euzhan Palcy. Itinerary of a pioneer”, until November 19, Centre Pompidou, Paris 4ᵉ. Presentation of films and screenings in the presence of the filmmaker this Monday, November 13 (The Fundamental Friend. Aimé Césaire/Léopold Ségar Senghor, 2008, 18 mn ; Journey of dissidents, 2005, 88 mins), and this Wednesday, November 15 (Aimé Césaire, a voice for history, 1994, 3 x 52 months).
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