NEWS
🎬 Presentation of Guillaume Robillard’s new book
Tuesday, April 29 at 7 p.m. · Calypso Bookstore · Paris 14th arrondissement
On the occasion of the 20th edition of the Europe by Europe Festival, an exceptional meeting is offered to you in partnership with the Calypso Bookstore 🕊️
🎤Around the work:
« Un cinéma décolonisé : les personnages du cinéma antillais »
published by Presses Universitaires des Antilles (Arts and Aesthetics collection).
👤 In the presence of the author: Guillaume Robillard
📽️ A member of the PRESENT Jury this year, Guillaume Robillard holds a doctorate in cinema, is a lecturer and researcher, a documentary filmmaker, and a specialist in Caribbean cinema and artistic production.
His work intersects colonial history, representations of identity, and filmic languages, with a sensitive, critical, and committed approach.
📖 About the book
In “A Decolonized Cinema“, Guillaume Robillard analyzes the narrative figures of Caribbean cinema and explores the tensions between memory, fiction, and reality. How can cinema free itself from imposed narratives? How do characters become agents of memory and identity reappropriation?
An essay praised for its depth and clarity, which questions the place of colonial history in the construction of Caribbean imaginations on screen.
✊🏽 « An essential read for anyone interested in world cinema, the decolonization of perspectives and contemporary Caribbean creation. »
📚 Back cover:
What is Caribbean cinema – Guadeloupe, Martinique? This book presents an analysis of all feature-length fiction films made by Caribbean directors, or those from the Caribbean, of which they retain a memory, in order to examine a possible “insider’s view.” Initially, it focuses on films whose plots take place mainly in Guadeloupe or Martinique, namely Caribbean-péyi cinema. What might it contain? In particular, this book focuses on the combination of characteristic characters of this cinema that distinguishes it within French production and in relation to international cinematographies: the Creole storyteller, the Maroon, the gadèdzafè-kenbwazè (medium-sorcerer), and the central role of women (femifocality).
It offers a detailed and accessible analysis of the staging of these recurring figures, which reveals a decolonial discourse, which will fade over the course of the films, as well as the beginnings of an aesthetic. Secondly, it questions the links existing between Antillean-péyi cinema, on the one hand, and films by Antillean directors, or of Antillean origin, set in other parts of the world: namely, Antillean-lòtbòdlo cinema (mainland France) and Antillean-tout-bò cinema (African continent, United States, etc.), as echoes of Antillean-péyi cinema.
📍 Practical information
📅 Tuesday, April 29, 2025
🕖 7:00 p.m.
📌 Calypso Bookstore, 32 rue Gassendi, 75014 Paris
📽️ A stone’s throw from the Cinéma Les 7 Parnassiens, just before the festival’s closing ceremony at 8 p.m.
📚 Free entrance, within the limit of available places.
🌍 Cinema, thought and transmission: an encounter not to be missed
