In the 1960s, engineer Ed Dwight was approached by the American government of John F. Kennedy to be the United States’ first African-American astronaut. After being highlighted in all the media of the time, which showed the sensitivity of the Kennedy government to the cause of human rights, Ed Dwight was never selected to go into space. He resigned from the Air Force in 1966, after the president’s death. Now a sculptor, he is a central figure in the documentary The Space Raceby Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and Lisa Cortés, which opens the Montreal International Black Film Festival on Wednesday.
The event, which is the 19the year, decided to give pride of place to documentaries this year. “I made the choice this year to favor documentaries, to the extent that it is precisely thanks to documentary evidence that things have evolved,” explains Jean-François Méan, responsible for programming the festival, referring in particular to to the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by the death of George Floyd. ” The film The Space Race raises issues of diversity and the fact that people from diverse backgrounds are sometimes used politically. So, I think it’s very topical,” he adds. The documentary Invisible Beauty For its part, traces the journey of Bethann Hardison, a pioneering black activist and model in the fashion world.
I made the choice this year to favor documentaries, to the extent that it is precisely thanks to documentary evidence that things have evolved.
Initially, the International Black Film Festival was created to “favor stories” featuring black protagonists. Today, “things have evolved,” says Jean-François Méan. People from diverse backgrounds are more featured on screen. The documentary, for its part, allows us to retrace parts of history that have been neglected in the past.
Documentary evidence
The film A Story of Bones, by Joseph Curran and Dominic Aubrey de Vere, offers an eloquent example. It traces the story of Annina van Neel, who discovered, during an airport project on the island of Sainte-Hélène, in the Atlantic, the bones from thousands of corpses of forgotten slaves. and without burial. Next to these human remains stands a mausoleum in memory of Napoleon, who died and was first buried in Sainte-Hélène, before his remains were repatriated to Paris, to Les Invalides. In the movie Colette and Justinby Alain Kassanda, a Congolese discovers that his grandfather was a collaborator in the coup d’état that overthrew Lumumba.
“It testifies to a desire to provide documentary evidence, a struggle, a quest for identity, a culture and a history, all stemming from a shared destiny. The goal is to promote a better understanding of history and the problems we face today,” adds Mr. Méan.
These are films representing around twenty countries which will be presented in Montreal, in different cinemas and in cultural centers. Then, the Festival will travel to Halifax, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. Like every year, the Being Black in Canada program allowed many emerging filmmakers to shoot short films testifying to their reality. “This is the initiative of Fabienne Colas, the founder of the festival, which aims to train young filmmakers to fill the gap, to encourage them to make films. […] She tries to create pioneers on the cinematographic level,” says Mr. Méan.
The Sudanese fiction feature film Goodbye Julia, by Mohamed Kordofani, from the Cannes Un Certain Regard selection, will close the festival. It tells the story of two women from opposing clans who form a friendship during the civil war in Sudan.
All films that are not in French are presented with subtitles.
The festival headquarters will be located at the Afromusée, rue Ontario. This is also where a pop-up marketSeptember 30 and 1er October, and the Black Market Speaker Series, September 28-1er October, in French or English, on different themes linked to current events.
The Montreal International Black Film Festival takes place from September 27 to 1er october.