The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire. 2024. France. Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich. With Zita Hanrot, Motell Foster, Josué Gutierrez. DCP courtesy Cinema Guild. In French, English; English subtitles. 75 min.
A special screening presented in anticipation of a forthcoming theatrical run at BAM, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire is Madeline Hunt-Ehrlich’s striking portrait of an elusive figure, Suzanne Césaire, a Martinique woman whose own writings and activism contributed greatly to the development of the Négritude movement in Paris in the 1930s—she was one of the few female voices in an otherwise male-dominated discourse—yet whose reputation continues to be overshadowed by that of her far more famous husband, Aime Césaire. A collaboration between Hunt-Ehrlich and Zita Hanrot, who plays an actress imagining herself in the role of this historical figure, the film masks and unmasks Suzanne Césaire in the playful, self-reflexive tradition of Jacques Rivette and in conversation with Sarah Maldoror’s own portraits of Aimé Cesaire featured in this retrospective.