ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

France

The Summit of the Gods – An existential “why?”

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Why do people (now a few thousand) climb Mt. Everest? George Mallory (who may or may not have been the first to reach the summit) famously answered the question by saying, “Because it’s there.” But there has to be more to it than that. Mountaineering is a dangerous, often lethal, activity. In The Summit of the Gods, directed by Patrick Imbert, the question of why someone may focus on a near impossible task is central.

This beautifully animated film is based on a manga series by Jirô Taniguchi, which was in turn based on a novel by Baku Yamemakura. When the manga series reached Europe many years after their original publication, they came to the attention of a French producer who started the process of making this film. (Which explains why the film features Japanese characters speaking French.) The animation creates a world of majestic and awe-inspiring mountains, as well as tense, exciting climbing sequences.

The story starts with Fukamachi Makoto, a photojournalist who has gone to Everest to get shots of Japanese climbers, when their attempt fails, he wonders what the point is off all this. But in a Kathmandu bar, he sees a camera that is reputed to have belonged to George Mallory. He later sees Habu Jôji, a climber who no one has heard from for years, with the camera. The idea that it is Mallory’s camera and could answer the question if he and his climbing partners had reached the summit becomes an obsession for Fukamachi, who begins to seek out Habu.

As the story progresses, it shifts from time to time to give us more information on Habu and the accidents that have shaped his view of climbing. He is very aware of the dangers of any mountain, but especially Everest. Fukamachi finds him as he’s preparing a solo ascent of the Southwest face, a particularly difficult climb. Fukamachi sets up at the basecamp and awaits Habu, planning on documenting his ascent.

Both Habu and Fukamachi are obsessed: Habu with doing something no one has done, and Fukamachi with finding Mallory’s camera. We might think of Fukamachi as something of Ishmael to Habu’s Ahab. The question of why they are doing this is always in the background. But it also becomes explicit. There is a point where each man asks the other, why they are there. Another question is why the summit matters more than life itself.

Each man has his own reasons, but it brings them both to the same place. They have each chosen a focus that they hope will heal an existential angst within them. So they come to believe that whether they survive or not is of less importance that what they are doing. They are committing their lives (and possibly their deaths) to their obsessions. The amazing vistas the animation creates serve to add even more depth to these philosophical ponderings.

The Summit of the Gods can be seen in select theaters and on Netflix.

Photos courtesy of Netflix.

Saturday at AFI Fest 2021

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If you’re in the mood for a time-bending coming-of-age story, Petite Maman will do the trick. From director Céline Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady On Fire, Tomboy) this is the story of eight year old Nelly, who after her grandmother’s death goes to the grandmother’s house with her parents. This is her mother’s childhood home. Nelly remembers her mother telling her about building a hut in the woods. One day her mother suddenly leaves without telling Nelly. When Nelly plays in the woods, she meets Monica, a girl her age who is building hut just as her mother described. When she goes to Monica’s house, we see it is the same house she is staying in, only many years earlier.  We (and Nelly) understand pretty quickly that she’s encountered her mother as a girl. Nelly moves back and forth between present and past houses and people. As she does so, she learns about her mother, her mother’s fears, and her own insecurities.

As in Sciamma’s previous films, Petite Maman has wonderful cinematography and brilliant character studies. It’s not so much a story of time travel per se as it is a mystical connection that will forever bond Nelly with her mother. Has it always been a bond that her mother has known?

Hit the Road is the premiere film from Iranian director Panah Panahi. This is a bizarre road trip with a loving (although it’s hard to tell sometimes) family driving across the country for some unknown reason. (It’s somewhat revealed later in the film.) The father is in the backseat with his leg in a cast. (Is it really broken?) The eldest son is driving with the mother beside him in front. The very energetic younger son seems to bounce around the car. And there’s a sick dog in the back. The chaos becomes a bit claustrophobic as we travel with them in the car.

The difficulty with the film is being not quite sure what it is about what is happening in Iran that has triggered this emergency road trip. I can conject various possibilities, but I expect the film’s Iranian audience would have a much better grasp of the situation.

And, of course, I have some shorts to share.

In Are You Still There? from directors Rayka Zehtabchi and Sam Davis, we spend a hot day with Safa when her car battery dies and she must wait in a strip mall parking lot until her mother can get off work to come jump the car. It is a long day (condensed to 15 minutes) that ends in triumph.

The documentary short Video Visit by Malika Zouhali-Worrall shows us the program at the Brooklyn Public Library that allows families of those held in New York City jails to have video call with their incarcerated families. It lets us discover the difficulties families have visiting in person, and the bureaucratic hurdles the library staff faces to try to keep this important program in place.  Libraries rule! (23 minutes)

Yoruga, directed by Federico Torrado Tobón, is a brief story of a lonely man in the not to distant future who goes to “Noah’s Ark”, a facility where some animals still survive. He can afford a one minute visit with one of these animals, and he shares a bit of his life in that short time. (7 minutes.)

Only the Animals: Looking for Love Amongst the Lost

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Everyone is looking for love… but not everyone knows what it is.

Set in the France’s frigid Causse Mejean, Only the Animals begins with the unsettling image of an abandoned car on a snowy road. A woman has disappeared and no one seems to have seen her or knows her. (Well, admits to knowing her anyways.) Telling individual stories that interact with one another, the film examines the lives and loves of its characters, including a French farmer’s wife (Laure Calamy), her naïve spouse (Denis Menochet), an unscrupulous African con-man (Guy Roger “Bibisse” N’drin), an excitable ingénue (Juliet Doucet) and more. As the local police gendarme attempts to piece together the truth, each of their lives threatens to unravel as a result of their own deceit and duplicities.

Directed and co-written by Gilles Marchand, Only the Animals is an unsettling but intriguing mystery that plays out through multiple perspectives and timelines. Taking a page from Run Lola Run, Animals is a murderous puzzle that requires patience as it is assembled. With each segment, Marchand unravels his intricate web of relationships, creating questions while he fills in gaps to the truth along the way. Set in the dead of winter, this is a world of dryness and death. Using (mostly) pale colour schemes and lighting, Marchand wants the viewer to feel the bone-chilling effects of his environments. In a place where the sun fails to shine, so too does its characters emotionally wilt from their isolation and personal struggles. (Somewhat ironically, as the film shifts scenes to Africa, he manages to create the opposite effect, exemplifying heat and desperation amongst his characters.) 

In Animals, relationships are as frozen as the surrounding area. In this town, everyone has secrets and each character lives by their own moral code. From adultery to corruption to straight up murder, everyone in Animalsis willing to bend the rules if it benefits them. (In fact, true to the title, it really seems that the animals themselves are the only ones who ‘speak’ with any sense of conscience in this world.)

What’s most interesting about Animals though is that each character seems to be lacking in the area of love. From adultery to abandonment, these particular people are not merely lonely. Instead, they struggle to even understand what love means. Perhaps the best example of this come when Drin’s boss tells him that ‘love is offering what you don’t have’. Although that certainly sounds like an interesting truth in some ways, it is used it the context of manipulation as opposed to genuine affection. In this way, love becomes the appearance of intimacy, instead of something real and life-giving.

However, Animals then embeds this idea within the motivations of its characters. Whereas Amandine believes obsession equates with love, Evelyne keeps everyone at bay. Meanwhile, Michel’s heart aches for an internet illusion despite having a woman he can care for living in the same home. Unrequited love, emotional manipulation, or simply just inexperience all play out within the lives of each character, leading to self-centred chaos when it comes to relationships. Though their drive may be to find love, everyone here is really simply trying to fill the voids that exist within their own soul. 

Whereas love is said to be about ‘offering what you don’t have’, what’s really missing is making sure that your heart has something to offer.

Dark and brooding, Only the Animals is more than content to sit in the shadows with its twisted tales of sexuality and obsession. As his characters scratch and claw for their own emotional survival, Marchand weaves a narrative of murder and mystery that understands the darkness that can bubble within the hearts of humanity. But be cautious when you hear characters express their love for one another. Due to their self-serving natures, their inability to truly offer love sometimes causes them to act more like animals.

Only the Animals debuts in theatres in Toronto and Vancouver on Friday, November 5th, 2021.

Mama Weed – Making the Most of Opportunity

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Mama Weed (La Daronne), from director Jean-Paul Salomé, takes us into the Paris underworld, but from a somewhat different perspective. Our entry into that world is not through a hardened career criminal or long-suffering police officer. It is a woman who stumbles into an opportunity and makes the most of it.

Patience Portefeux (Isabelle Huppert) works as a translator for the police. She spends her day listening to the phone calls of the city’s drug dealers. She’s having a bit of an affair with her boss. But she is going broke. Her mother is in a long-term care facility, and Patience is months behind in paying. As she listens to a call one day, she hears her mother’s nurse’s son and tries to protect him. In the process she ends up with about a ton of hashish. She sets up her own drug network, making use of some of the dimmer dealers she knows from the wiretaps. Her inside information about how the police work gives her a way to try to avoid detection. She takes on the persona of an Arab woman and soon she is being tracked down by the police (including her lover/boss) and the real criminals whose drugs these are.

The film is a blend of comedy, thriller, and caper adventure. We genuinely enjoy seeing Patience manipulating the system and coming out on top, even though she is essentially an amateur at this kind of life. But she quickly figures out how to launder her money as well as work around the police who are getting closer, in part because of the ineptitude of her accomplices.

It is also a story that reflects the desperation that might induce someone into crime. Patience had no plans of becoming a drug lord. But because her mother is about to be evicted from the nursing home, when the opportunity arose, she saw it as her way out of the financial hole she was in. But the film really doesn’t delve too deeply into the ethnic and socio-economic issues around drugs and drug policy. It is essentially an enjoyable ride through growing tensions and releases as the story plays out.

Mama Weed is showing in select theaters

Photos courtesy of Music Box Films.

Day 4 at AFI Docs

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Today’s films range from the mundane to the worlds of power and money. Documentaries are ways to mark points in time, to see life in new ways, and to broaden our knowledge. That happens in these films.

The HBO Documentary Series Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union premiered the first two episodes at AFI Docs. Directed by Peter Kunhardt, this series focuses on President Obama’s life with special emphasis on the role race played in shaping his life and his politics. Part One of the series covers his early life through his election to the U.S. Senate. Part Two overs his run for the Presidency in 2007-08. The film relies on archival footage and selected interviews with people who have known him.

This is a very conventional telling of the President’s story. It lacks an intimacy and personal understanding of the events in his life. The first part never really asks questions about the events in his life. In the second part, as he runs for the presidency, there are more insightful comments made about the tightrope of being a Black candidate and being a candidate for all the people. Questions of too Black or not Black enough come up. There are times that Black commentators critique some of the things he said in speeches as not resonating with the Black experience. The series will add another perspective for those seeking to understand the historic nature oif Obama’s election.

We (Nous) from filmmaker Alice Diop is a look at life in the Paris suburbs. There is no through story, just looks at the mundane world. We see a mechanic as he works on a car and gets a phone call from his mother in Mali. We see the filmmaker’s sister as she makes her rounds as a visiting nurse to elderly patients. We see kids in a park. We visit a Holocaust museum. There are no contexts given, we simply observe.

A title card at the end of the film the filmmaker mentions having learned “to see and love what is before my eyes.” That is very much what this film is about. It’s not about the narrative. It is about seeing these little bits of life as they happen.

Never mind “Antique Roadshow”. Suppose that old painting you have is really a Leonardo DaVinci. That is the crux of The Lost Leonardo by Andreas Koefoed. It traces the history of a painting found at an obscure auction in New Orleans, that was later restored and attributed to (not without controversy) Leonardo. The price paid at the New Orleans auction: $1175. The Price eventually paid at a Christies auction: $450,000,000. And, oh, by the way, you can’t see it because the current owner, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, refuses to exhibit it.

The painting, “Salvator Mundi”, becomes the focal point for looking at the art world and how it operates. It’s not just about art and collectors, but about finance and even global politics. The film brings in many of those who were involved in the story of the painting as it advanced through the art world, but also some outside people, who add knowledge about other aspects, including a former CIA operative. There is a sense in which what the film is about is truth. What makes truth? Can we know the truth? Does truth become just a matter of belief? Or does $450,000,000 buy truth? The Lost Leonardo will arrive in theaters in August.

Shorts for today include The Game, directed by Roman Hodel, that shows a bit of a soccer game. We see the crowds in the stand, the TV control room, everything is ready to go. But it’s not the game we watch, but the referee. Having officiated high school football in the past, I know that no one goes to the game to watch the referee, but he (or sometimes these days, she) is a key part of what happens. Another of the shorts is Eagles (Águilas), directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Maite Zubiaurra. That film chronicles the work of volunteers who search the Arizona desert for immigrants who get lost, or to find their remains to bring peace of mind for their families.

Photos courtesy of AFI.

Two of Us: Crazy Romantic

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How far would you really go to be with the one that you love?

Many of us think we have the answer to this question yet, when the moment arrives, our true hearts are always revealed. When trouble finally rocks the boat of our relationships, will we stand back? Or are we willing to stay and fight? This type of undying love is explored in Two of Us, a film which understands the real passion of romance stems from one’s commitment to their significant other. 

Two of Us tells the story of Nina (Barbara Sukowa) and Madeleine (Martine Chevallier), two retired women who have been romantically involved for decades. Though they spend their daily lives together, their relationship has remained largely in secret over that time, especially to Madeleine’s family. However, when Madeleine suddenly falls ill, their relationship is turned upside down and Nina must find a way to hide their secret while also caring for the woman that she loves.

Directed by Fillipo Meneghetti, Two of Us is a powerful and heartbreaking piece that puts the wildness of love on full display. For his first feature, Meneghetti makes a stunning debut. Though he isn’t flashy in his approach, his confidence and skill as a storyteller is fully evident. Using basic medium shots and a flattened colour palette, Meneghetti keeps the focus on the cast and the marvellous script. Well-written and earnestly performed, Two of Us is a simple film about what it means to care for someone so deeply that you’ll do anything to support them in their time of need. 

As the film’s central emotional core, the chemistry between Chevallier and Sokowa is absolutely palpable. Even though Chevallier spends much of the film quietly healing, every moment that they are onscreen together contains a complex blend of tenderness and ferocity. However, while both women deliver solid performances, its Sokowa’s work here that is nothing short of remarkable. As a woman driven by love, there’s a wildness within her performance that borders on dangerous at times yet never strays from her undying commitment to her partner. 

Because, for Nina, Madeleine is all that matters.

In fact, the love on display between these two women is something truly unique. This is not the blazing heat of a passionate affair or even the infatuation of youth. Instead, Two of Us gives an unfiltered look at the type of love that lasts. Despite their differences and struggles as a couple, Nina and Madeleine remain absolutely committed to one another. After Madeleine is hospitalized, Nina is understandably shocked yet she responds with ferocious dedication to the love of her life.

Although her methods can be extreme (see ‘headlight, smashing’), she herself is not unstable. Instead, her desire to be with her lover drives everything that she does, whether its ensuring Madeleine gets the proper medical care to even sneaking into the apartment at night so that they can visit. (What’s more, even the act of keeping their secret becomes an act of love as Nina seeks to honour Madeleine’s wishes, despite the massive stress and personal cost.) In this way, Nina’s dedication to Madeleine is both sacrificial and steady, as opposed to merely sexual. Unlike other onscreen romances in recent years, theirs is a story of two souls who remain deeply connected in the most intimate of ways. 

And, for better or for worse, that is the ultimate depiction of love.

Two of Us is available on VOD, DVD and Blu-Ray on February 5th, 2021.

Thursday at AFIFest 2020

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As AFIFest 2020 Presented by Audi comes to an end, I want to thank the festival for allowing me to cover it again this year. This is always one of the highlights of my cinematic year. It is always an enormous task to put on a festival, especially one like AFIFest. This year has presented festivals with many challenges. AFI has come through with a tremendous event.

The Argentinian film Piedra Sola, from director Alejandro Telémaco Tarraf, is an ethnographic fiction film. In the highlands of Argentina we meet a llama herder as he and his son make a long journey to sell meat and hides. At home his herd is being killed off by a puma he cannot find. Other herders convene to discuss the need to be in harmony with Pachamama (Mother Earth) by sacrificing some llamas to the puma. As he journeys to satisfy the puma and the natural order he also must confront his own mortality. Much of the film is made up of long, meditative scenes. This is the kind of film that takes viewers into a very unfamiliar world. The lives of the people we meet are very different than our own. We often may not understand what they are doing, but we do find a common sense of the human condition.

Rival, from German director Marcus Lenz, is the story of Roman, a Ukrainian boy who is smuggled into Germany to be reunited with his mother Oksuna, who has been serving as a caregiver for the last three years. Now that the woman she has been caring for has died, she has stayed on with the woman’s husband Gert. Oksuna and Gert are in a relationship, and young Roman is not happy about it. He is always sullen when Gert is around. Roman clearly has some Oedipal feelings towards his mother. Roman continues to act out in various ways. But when his mother takes ill and is hospitalized, Gert takes him to a country house to avoid authorities since Oksuna and Gert are not in the country legally. Awaiting Oksuna’s release, Gert and Roman begin to bond a bit, but then Gert too is stricken, leaving Roman on his own not really knowing where he is and not speaking German.

I also took in a few shorts to round out my week.

Blocks (11 minutes), by Bridget Moloney, is the story of a mother of two small children struggling to keep up with it all. And they she begins vomiting Legos. Eventually, those Legos will provide her with a bit of an escape.

In Heading South (13 minutes), by Yuan Yuan, an eight year old Mongolian girl is taken from her home on the grasslands into the city for her father’s birthday. She learns that his father has remarried. She is very much an outsider at the raucous celebration filled with loud voices and drinking. We sense that the only relationship between father and daughter is what is forced upon them.

Dustin (20 minutes), from Naïla Guiguet, follows a young transgendered woman through a night at a nightclub. As she interacts with her friends, we sense her unhappiness as the story moves from hysteria to melancholy. The kindness and love she longs for are hard to find.

Wednesday at AFIFest 2020

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My cat has enjoyed AFIFest 2020 Presented by Audi a great deal this year. She rarely has a chance to spend a whole afternoon on my lap when I actually have to go to movies. I doubt she realizes the qualities of movies she’s sleeping through. She’s missing out on some very good stuff.

The documentary Collective, by German-Romanian filmmaker Alexander Nanau, arrived at AFIFest with a load of festival awards. It takes place in the aftermath of a tragic 2015 nightclub fire that claimed 27 lives. The corruption that that fire exposed led to the fall of the government, and a new temporary government of technocrats. Yet, another 37 victims of the fire died over the next four months, mostly from infections. All the while the Minister of Health claimed the hospitals were among the best in Europe. When journalists discovered that the disinfectants being sold to hospitals were blatantly diluted, a new scandal erupted. This film takes us inside the controversy, the investigation, and the attempts at the new Minister of Health to create a better medical system.

The key quote I found in the film: “The way a state functions can crush people some of the time.” This is one of many films I’ve seen this year that portray the need of an independent and trustworthy press for democracy to function. Collective not only speaks to that need, but is clear that the power of government can be overwhelming. This film is Romania official submission for Best International Feature Film Oscar consideration.

In Ekwa Msangi’s Farewell Amor, an Angolan immigrant in New York is reunited with his family after seventeen years apart. Walter came to America following the Angolan Civil War, his wife Esther and daughter Sylvia went to Tanzania. It has taken all this time for Walter to get permission for them to join him. Meanwhile, their lives have gone in different directions. Esther has become quite religious. Walter has made a life for himself—with another woman. Sylvia, in high school, has her own dreams. There are chapters in the film that give us the perspective of each of these characters. It is interesting how dancing keeps coming into play within the film. The characters find identity, both separately and as family, in dancing. At times that dancing may be a source of conflict, but it can also be the beginning of healing.

You may wonder if there are ever any comedies at festivals. Yes, in fact I took one in yesterday with My Donkey, My Lover & I by Caroline Vignal. Antoinette, French fifth grade teacher, is having an affair with Vladimir, the father of one of her students. When he cancels a romantic getaway to take a hiking trip with his wife and daughter, Antoinette decides she will do the same hiking adventure and surprise him. Totally unfamiliar with hiking, she hires a donkey for the journey. Naturally, it becomes a comedy of errors as Antoinette must deal not only with Patrick the donkey, but with her total lack of hiking ability. When she does manage to run into Vladimir and his family, the awkwardness and revelations become a bit more than she expected. The trip turns out to be a way for Antoinette to come to better understand herself and opens up new possibilities for her.

Cuties – Growing Up Fast

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Yes, Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties (Mignonnes) has created a great deal of controversy. I wouldn’t categorize that controversy as a tempest in a teapot, because the film does revolve around the sexualization of young women, but in a reflective and critical manner, not in an exploitive or abusive manner. In fact, the film suggests an outrage about this just as strong as the Twitterverse’s demands of boycott. The film, however, addresses the issue by asking us to empathize with the young characters, rather than turning away and ignoring what is happening.

Amy (Fathia Youssouf) is a Somalian immigrant living with her mother and two brothers in a poor section of Paris. They are observant Muslims, going to the women’s service at the mosque, hearing how evil it is for women to bare their bodies. Her father has returned to Somalia with plans to bring home a second wife. The planning for the wedding falls to Amy’s mother and the family matriarch. Amy is expected to participate, even though she feels abandoned and rejected.

 New in her middle school, she is attracted to a group of girls (Médina El Aidi-Azouni, Esther Gohourou, Ilanah Cami-Goursolas, and Myriam Hamma) who want to win a hip-hop dance contest. Amy begins to work her way into the group, and eventually begins dancing with them. Yes, the dances are mildly suggestive, but as Amy and the others begin to see other more risqué dancing videos online, Amy instigates making their dances even more so. When they begin posting their videos on social media, the affirmations are intoxicating. Here, Amy finds the kind of attention she misses at home.

Cuties is a painful coming-of-age story. At home, Amy has learned that in her world women are disposable. Even though she and her mother will still be in the home with her father and new wife, it is obvious that they are not enough. They are being relegated to second-class status. The worlds of the mosque, home, and society are acutely at odds.

A large part of that conflict involves the meaning of being a woman. At home Amy gets two lessons on womanhood. The first is when she has her first period, she is told she’s now a woman. The other lesson is when the matriarch tells her that the way to become a woman is to prepare the food for her father’s upcoming wedding. But society has many ways of teaching that women are sexualized, and the way to get approval and love is through that route. It is a lesson that young girls see often.

There are parts of this film that are hard to watch. The increasingly sexualized dancing is the film’s way of rubbing our noses in a culture that may not officially promote that behavior in children, but certainly is willing to tolerate it, possible even think it’s cute that they want to be so grown up. When Amy gets approval and affirmation along the way, she wants more. Eventually she will push too far.

It is also hard to watch the way Amy must deal with a life at home that will never be fulfilling. The place of women in her ethnic world is belittling. We don’t want that world for her any more than we do the sexualized world she is entering.

The film is about a world in which children (especially girls) are encouraged in many ways to grow up to fast. What “to grow up” means varies within cultures and societies. But adolescence is always a challenge for these children who face challenges of identity and belonging. Can we really expect eleven year olds to make the proper choices when faced with so many voices and images? The film serves as a strong reminder that left to their own choices, calamity is near at hand.

Finally, I want to address the widespread denunciation of the film by those who haven’t seen it. It’s my understanding that what created the controversy was an ill-advised publicity poster used by Netflix (which Netflix later apologized for and admitted was inappropriate). Certainly that poster gave an impression of the film that would suggest it would be offensive. But often posters (or even trailers) do not capture the reality of a film. The way the condemnation of the film went viral suggests that we live in a world in which people don’t want to make their own decision, but will just pass on what people who yell the loudest have to say. Cuties is actually a very clear indictment of a society that sexualizes children. That is the voice that needs to be heard.

Photo courtesy of Netflix.

Myth of a Colorblind France – Black Expats

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Paris has been a haven for American expatriot artists of all sorts, but especially for African-Americans. In Myth of a Colorblind France, from Alan Govenar, we get to see that history in the 20th century and how it continues today. However, just because African-Americans found freedom there, doesn’t mean that there is no racism in France.

Most of the film is a celebration of African-American artists, writers, and musicians who migrated to Paris starting early in the 20th century. With the advent of World War I, when black soldiers were readily accepted by the French (who didn’t know about American segregation), many African-Americans felt free for the first time. In the post-war era, African-Americans began to return to France to enjoy the ability express their arts freely. This continued in the post-World War II era as well. Among those we learn about are dancer Josephine Baker, jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet, painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, writers Countee Cullen, Chester Himes, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. The film also allows us to hear some of the stories of current African-American expats who continue to find their home in Paris.

There are two key elements that made African-Americans feel welcome in France. The first was the absence of the racism that was so engrained in American society. When American blacks came to France, the segregation and discrimination they knew at home was not part of French culture. The second element is that in France these people were seen as artists rather than entertainers. That is a key difference. There was no sense of minstrel show when at a jazz club or seeing Josephine Baker. These were people who were making art—something that was valued in the French culture.

Note that I’m talking here about the African-American experience in France. It is noted in a few parts of the film that this is not the same experience that Africans and French people of African descent deal with. One of the current African-American expats recalls being in a neighborhood where many Africans live, and being harshly stopped by police and asked for papers. He says when they heard his American accent and saw he had US identification, they acted very politely. He doesn’t believe that would have been the case otherwise.

Early on it is pointed out that “racism in France is much more complicated” It is tied to the period of colonialism when France controlled many places in North and West Africa, and the Caribbean. People from these former colonies have often migrated to France as well. Even those born in France with such heritage, often times are treated much differently that the African-Americans.

The film really spends very little time on this issue, even though it seems to be implied by the film’s title. While the film is instructive for us to see the great talent among African-Americans that was nurtured in France, it fails to give more than some passing examples of how racism works in France. There is no systematic look at how racism and anti-immigrant (especially anti-Moslem) sentiment has taken root in France. That might serve as a starting point for discussion in French culture about the realities of racism. It might also serve as an opening for Americans to better understand some of the subtle ways racism works here as well.

Myth of a Colorblind France is available through Virtual Cinema at local arthouses.