(Thread on Black womanhood, representations and French cinema) - So today, someone (ecstatically) told me, upon finding that I was from France, that they #Girlhood.
I don’t .
I just discussed this at #AAIHS19 and #NEMLA2019. Sciamma’s #Girlhood was a letdown for #BlackFrance

A cinematic beauty loaded with stereotypes and harmful representations. The film needs to be analyzed not just as an art piece, but also in the context of its production in “color-blind” France, of its bizarre reception by French critics, of its wide rejection by Black French and

3. and in light of the director’s many problematic comments (“These bodies are blank pages that I fill using my artistic freedom” or “I did not make a movie on Blackness but rather a film on universalism, on the universal angsts of adolescent love. These heroines are universal”).

4. The Black body in the West is not a blank canvas. It is a loaded site on which the director freely surfs to pile on stereotypes: the muted mom, the violent Black Muslim brother from the hood, the promiscuous black adolescent girls, the drug dealers, the absent father etc...

5. And can someone please tell me where is the liberation for the characters? When Marieme gets tired of her multiple masks, she tries to go back home, rings the bell and is petrified when someone asks : “qui c’est?” (Who is it?). She is speechless and does not know who she is

6. anymore after wearing a zillion different masks. The director has lost her (and us).
It took me a while to understand the fascination for this film (inside and outside of France, especially in the U.S). I am happy that it ushered the career of some of these young ladies in

7. French cinema (although Kharidja Toure, the main actress was recently one of the major voices of the collective “Noire n’est pas mon métier” (Black is not my job) a collective of Black actresses and directors who wrote one of 2018 most-talked-about books, an harrowing account

8. of the limitations they faced and multiple abuses they endured as Black women in French cinema….
As a Black French women, I will never consider Girlhood as a movie that portrays my experience in France. Never. I can read the “crime” section of any newspapers or watch the

9. society” section of my main right-leaning news channel and get the same content. In the past years, a host of films, documentaries and books produced by Black French women have been addressing our experiences from the inside: I made #MariannesNoires to address this issue.

10. It was heavily influenced by #NathalieEtoke’s “Afrodiasporic French Identities”. In the past 10years alone a host if Black Female Directors have emerge: Research #FabienneKanor, #AliceDiop, #IsabelleBoniClaverie, #AmandineGay, #JoszaAnjembe

#AnnaSupernovaTjé, #MaimounaDoucouré, #NathalieEtoke, #MameFatouNiang, #NehemieLemal, #BintouDembele, #JohannaMakabi…the list is long!
Please, please, please screen, analyze, work on and #citeablackwoman #citeblackwomen
#RepresentationMatters #BlackFrance