AIMÉ CÉSAIRE: A VOICE FOR HISTORY

Aimé Césaire: A voice for history (Aimé Césaire: Une voix pour l’histoire)
Euzhan Palcy • 1994 • 165 mins • France, Senegal

The Alliance is honored to participate in Re-Imagining Tropiques, a multipart series of programs in homage to Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, presented by HotHouse.

Join us on Saturday, November 16 for a three-part documentary about Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, featuring many of the most important world-renowned artistic and intellectual figures of the past six decades.

“The first part covers the poet’s life, works and political action. Aimé Césaire takes the audience on a tour of his beloved Martinique. [The second part deals with] the ethics, the theory and the philosophy of negritude in its beginnings. Césaire reflects on his various Parisian encounters with intellectuals … as well as his encounter with Africa through the mediation of Léopold Sédar Senghor. [The third part attempts to answer the questions,] how does one find “the strength to face tomorrow” after the disappointments of decolonization, the failures in the Third World, the “ills of development” [-and the strength to face] the planetary crisis?”

The screening will be followed by a reception featuring complimentary French wine, sponsored by Villa Albertine. Non-alcoholic options will be available.

Doors open at 1:30 p.m. Please enter via 54 W Chicago Ave.

Entrée libre: free for high school and university students with ID on-site; .edu addresses accepted online.


About Re-Imagining Tropiques
When HotHouse Executive Director Marguerite Horberg met avant-garde jazz pianist, violinist, singer, and composer Aruán Ortiz one night in Havana’s cultural center Fabrica de Arte, she pitched the idea of a project in Chicago. A few years later, Ortiz was touring “Re-imagining Tropiques,” a musical journey referencing the seminal journal from Martinique produced by the Césaires in the 1940s. HotHouse expanded the regard of the movement and invited other co-presenters into what is now a multi-disciplinary six-part program. In this signature project, HotHouse looks at themes of Afro-centric surrealism, Négritude and Caribbean liberation movements, pan-Africanism, and creative expression produced by marginalized voices. 

About Aimé Césaire
Aimé Césaire was a Francophone Martinican poet, author, and politician.
In 1934 Césaire, along with Senegalese poet and politician Léopold Senghor and Guyanan poet Léon Damas, founded the student journal Etudiant Noir (Black Student). This group of Black Francophone intellectuals developed the concept of Négritude, the embrace of Blackness and Africanness as a counter to a legacy of colonial self-hatred.
Césaire’s intellectual work is tied to anticolonial movements. Also an accomplished playwright exploring the paradox of Black identity under French colonial rule, Césaire’s shift to drama in the late 1950s and 1960s allowed him to integrate the modernist and surrealist techniques of his poetry and the polemics of his prose to resist the powers of colonial domination.

About HotHouse
HotHouse is a non-profit institution founded in 1988 by Marguerite Horbergthat that has garnered numerous awards and accolades for its pioneering work operating inclusive social spaces that serve as a hub for international musicians and artists. HotHouse has earned a well-regarded reputation for presenting an astonishing array of signature programs in a variety of venues throughout the Chicago metropolitan area.

Merci à nos partenaires / Thanks to our event partners