On the legacy of colonialism

What is interesting is that in the history of film, and the amount of films from the 20th century and from the 19th century that are available today tell a one-sided history. There is a whole part of humanity that is not given the opportunity to see themselves in film, and who cannot understand their own history through cinema, because they weren’t given the opportunity to make the images themselves. They see themselves and their ancestors and their grandparents depicted as savages, as people who don’t have a voice, people who are filmed like animals, people who are exoticized and who are part of the colonial narratives. Once there have been filmmakers from other countries, from the colonial countries, we have been able to start seeing people from the colonies owning their own narrative. It was, for example, very important during the Algerian revolution, when people from Algeria fought the French who colonized them, because they were supported by French filmmakers who gave them the tools to tell about their revolutions from their perspectives.

Cinema is intertwined with the history of theater in France. Since the 16th century, there has been a representation of non-white people on stage. This shows that there’s been an interest of French people for the world, of course, but also for this subject matter of race and politics. It’s not something new and it continued after and with the history of theater, with the arrival of cinema.

As a French Black actress of West African origin, I’ve often heard that we have to be patient. We have to wait until the French society is ready to have a representation that is not only white. And when I look back to this time, I have the feeling that we, as French people, no matter where we come from, we have the same legacy. And this legacy is made of métissage. It’s made of this multiplicity of the French society. We didn’t arrive two decades ago with the waves of immigration. We’ve been there for a long time. Métissage is not only about mixed races. It’s not biological only. To me, it’s about a new culture that is constantly evolving because there’s such a mix of different people, different cultures that it doesn’t become one culture forever