• 13h00 Talk with Gaëlle Choisne and Michèle Magema, moderated by Sorana Munsya
• 14h30 Talk with Soñ Gweha and Sorana Munsya
• 16h00 Black Archive film program
  • Vertière n’existe pas by Gaëlle Choisne (12’40”)
  • À l’Ouest by Violaine Le Fur (23’)
  • Douvan Jou ka levé by Géssica Généus (51’)

“Vertière n’existe pas” is an experimental film produced in the form of a montage that keeps re-editing itself, resulting in a repetition of the film with a different temporality each time. As if the same story had been repeatedly reedited, each version using the same elements but changing their sequence. The film is based on the reflections of writer Le Glaunec, who explains how Haitian history has been censored in the history of humanity. He keeps saying that “vertigo does not exist”, but by repeating it over and over again, even in its negation, it does exist.

Gaëlle Choisne lives and works in Paris. Sensitive to contemporary issues, Gaëlle Choisne’s practice takes into account the complexity of the world, its political and cultural disorder, whether it be the over-exploitation of nature, its resources, or the vestiges of colonial history, where Creole esoteric traditions, myths and popular cultures mingle. Her projects are conceived as ecosystems of sharing and collaboration, pockets of ‘resistance’ where new possibilities are created. Gaëlle Choisne’s work has been exhibited in institutions worldwide. She was the recipient of the Aware Prize in 2021 and the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2024.

• Language: French — Subtitles: English

“À l’Ouest” is an autobiographical film retracing the filmmaker’s life, from her birth to her reconciliation with her father’s native Cameroon. This quest for reconciliation takes in all the key episodes of a life mixed between Africa and France. From the loss of bearings in youth, to the realization of the need to discover the missing part of her father’s culture, Violaine takes us along the roads of Cameroon, camera in hand, in a film that has all the elements of a magical healing object that can now be communicated through the medium of film.

Born of a Breton mother and a Bamiléké father, Violaine Le Fur grew up in the Paris suburbs. She studied art history and archaeology at the Michelet Institute in Paris. She began her artistic training at La Villa Arson (École Nationale Supérieur d’Art de Nice) and finished at La Cambre (École Nationale Supérieur des Arts Visuels de Bruxelles) in photography. As a filmmaker, visual artist, musician and curator, she organizes artistic events in Europe and on the African continent. She is interested in the therapeutic dimension of art and the healing powers of certain works.

• Language: French — Subtitles: English

What does it mean to be Haitian today? How can we overcome stagnation at every level of Haitian society? What is this ‘disease of the soul’ that is eating away at this people? The filmmaker was born in a poor neighborhood. Today, at the age of 31, she is an actress and director. Drawing on her own personal journey, marked by her mother’s mental illness and her own quest for identity, she wants to offer a fresh take on her native island and its people.

Géssica Généus is a Haitian actress, singer and film director. In 2010, after the earthquake, she got involved in the reconstruction of her country, working for the United Nations, before obtaining a scholarship to study at Acting International in Paris. She then returned to Haiti and set up her own production company, Ayizan Production, to develop her own projects. In 2017, her film Douvan jou ka leve (The Day will Rise) won seven awards. Her first feature film, Freda, won 25 awards at international festivals, after premiering in official selection at the Cannes Festival in 2021.

• Language: Haitian Creole — Subtitles: English

Initiated in 2021, Black Archive is an itinerant film program that gathers filmmakers, artists and thinkers engaged in rethinking, challenging and revisiting the cinematic representation of Black bodies, narratives and imaginaries beyond stereotyped visions and narrow distribution circuits. In response to “The Last Place They Thought Of”, Black Archive proposes a program of films, a performance and conversations invoking our multifaceted relations with the “beyond” and its entanglement with our ways of recording memory and writing history. The program is conceived by Black Archive: Sofia Dati, Stéphane Gérard, Maxime Jean-Baptiste and Eden Tinto Collins.