May 10th 2018

Quartiers Lointains: Emerging Afro-French filmmakers
with curator CLAIRE DIAO and filmmaker JOSZA ANJEMBE

How do we know ourselves when we receive only pieces of our family history? When we return unaware to the site of our childhood? With bitterness, humor, revolt and poetry, the filmmakers of Quartiers Lointains, a traveling program of short films by young French filmmakers of color, traverse the complex terrain of self-image creation. Screening followed by conversation with series co-curators Jennifer Wild (UChicago Cinema & Media Studies, Romance Languages and Literatures), Jacqueline Stewart (UChicago Cinema & Media Studies, Gray Center for Arts + Inquiry), Claire Diao, curator of the Quartiers Lointains Season 5, and Josza Anjembe, director of Le bleu blanc rouge de mes cheveux.

Retour à Genoa City | Benoît Grimalt, 2017, 29min
Granny and her brother Uncle Thomas have watched the same American soap opera, every single day, since 1989. Twenty years later, I come back to see them so they can fill me in on the 3,527 episodes I’ve missed.

Nulle part | Askia Traoré, 2013, 25min
Jacky returns to his childhood neighborhood after 20 years for a funeral, his friends and his first love.

Le bleu blanc rouge de mes cheveux | Josza Anjembe, 2016, 21 min
Seyna, a French teenager of Cameroonian descent, is passionate about the country where she was born. She aspires to only one thing: getting her French citizenship. But her father Amidou is vehemently opposed to this.

Gagarine | Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh, 2015, 15min
Twenty-year-old Youri lives with his mother in a social housing district near Paris. But the building is due to be demolished, and with it, the backdrop of his childhood dreams. How will he take off when he no longer has a spaceship?

LOCATION: Harper Theater | 5238 S Harper

This event is part of the Cinema 53 spring 2018 series, Intimités: Everyday Life in Contemporary Afro/French Cinema, curated by Jennifer Wild (UChicago Cinema & Media Studies, Romance Languages and Literatures) and Jacqueline Stewart (UChicago Cinema & Media Studies, Gray Center for Arts + Inquiry).

Cinema 53 is a partnership between the historic Harper Theater in downtown Hyde Park and UChicago’s Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry. The spring series is co-presented with Institut Français, Cultural Services of the Consulat Général de France, UC’s France Chicago Center and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.

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