ÉCOUTEZ, MONDE BLANC. Un film de Julien Suaudeau
Author: Julien Suaudeau
Source: Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Volume: 26, Issue: 4-5, Pages: 490-516, DOI: 10.1080/17409292.2022.2107266, Aug. 2022
Type of Publication: Screenplay
Abstract: This screenplay raises the ghosts of the Atlantic. Set in one of the haunted places of French colonialism, the fortress where Toussaint Louverture was deported by Bonaparte and died in 1803, the film summons the voices of Afro-French and Francophone authors. They call out to us from deep in the darkness; we are jolted awake, prompted to remember: between 1642 and 1848, France enslaved 4 million people, 1.5 million captured in Africa and 2.5 million born as slaves in the colonies. Oblivion perpetuates the "White order", by erasing its crimes behind la grandeur et le rayonnement de la France. ecoutez, monde blanc is a poem made of these missing pages. It is also a chant of resistance: through the invocation of pain and suffering, the ghosts whisper a story of survival, emancipation, and freedom. They come back to life in a choreographed trance, dancing to a postcolonial beat that merges the history of three continents.