West Indies
Med Hondo / DZ, MR, FR, 1979 / 110 min.
This political musical uses songs and ballets to tell the story of the Antillean people from the 17th century to the present. This powerful film is set on a gigantic slave transporter that symbolises relations between Africa, Europe and the Caribbean.
West Indies adroitly jumps through time to illustrate the parallels between slavery and contemporary migration. Nowadays, a different ‘trade’ leads away from Europe.
The film starts with Jean Aubert introducing sugar cane to the French West Indies as a plantation crop. Subsequently stories are told about the slave trade between the West Indies, Africa, Europe and America. This makes West Indies a pamphlet against the French colonisation of the West Indies and parts of the Africa continent, a recurring theme for the Mauritania-born, French director Med Hondo.
Hondo shot his film at a disused Citroën factory along the Quai de Javel in Paris, a strong symbol of the exploitation of multiple generations of workers.It lends West Indies that consists of a series of tableaus, with Creole as the binding ingredient, a strong, theatrical setting. This Brechtian distance gives the film its power.
Programmers of the Future
West Indies is part of the Black Atlantic Visions programme, composed by Programmer of the Future Janilda Bartolomeu. Black Atlantic Visions is a nuanced and genre-defying programme showcasing Afro-diasporic cinema that focusses on Black outlooks, which see through colonial, consensus reality.
First cohort
This summer, three Programmers of the Future present their first film programmes in Eye. They are part of the first cohort of a traineeship for future film programmers, set up by Eye in 2022.
This is part of
Details
Director
Med Hondo
Production year
1979
Country
DZ, MR, FR
Original title
West Indies ou les Nègres marrons de la liberté
Length
110 min.
Language
French
Subtitles
ENG
Format
DCP
Part of
Programmers of the Future 2023
This summer, three Programmers of the Future present their first film programmes in Eye Filmmuseum. Programmers Janilda Bartolomeu, Korée Wilrycx and Kseniia Bespalova are among the very first to take part in Eye’s talent development programme for future film programmers, set up in 2022. The programme will feature cinema from the African diaspora that counters the notion of a singular reality, female artists on masculinity and alternative visual geographies of the former Soviet Union.
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