The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire. Film Screening, mit einer Einführung von Miriam Rainer

In the organizer's words:

Film Screening
English and French, with English subtitles

Safi Faye Hall
Free admission

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (2024) draws attention to the life and intellectual work of Suzanne Césaire, a writer, teacher and surrealist thinker from Martinique. Although she was often overshadowed by her husband Aimé Césaire, she was a strong voice in her own right, shaping surrealism beyond its European roots and engaging intensively with anti-colonial ideas.

Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich's film is not a conventional biographical documentary, but a poetic meditation on Césaire's life and ideas. The film draws on her essays published in the magazine Tropiques , which she co-founded in the 1940s, and adopts a lyrical approach. It explores Césaire's rejection of colonial rationality and her turn towards what she called the "Martinican nothingness" - a space of creative resistance and renewal.

The film focuses on the clash between historical erasure and artistic reparation. Through archival footage, abstract imagery and poetic storytelling, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire reimagines her legacy, situating her both within the surrealist movement and the broader anti-colonial struggle. Her intellectual exchange with André Breton, who visited Martinique in 1941 and praised her writings, serves as an anchor for the film's exploration of her radical vision.

With: Miriam Rainer