About the Event
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire
Directed by Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich
(US, 2024, 75 min)
Friday, March 13, 7:00 PM
The screening is presented in collaboration with The Menil Collection. A discussion will precede the film on Thursday, March 12, at the Menil, featuring filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, visual artist Leslie Hewitt, and Natalie Dupêcher, Associate Curator of Modern Art at the Menil.
For more information visit: menil.org
An actress and new mother (played by Zita Hanrot) is haunted by voices as she embarks on inhabiting the role of surrealist writer Suzanne Roussi-Césaire. In the sleepy palm groves of the tropics, a small group of filmmakers and actors confront the history of writer Suzanne Césaire in her youth and then stage scenes from her life, troubling the “paradise” of historical memory. Moving between narrative filmmaking and abstraction - a night at a 1940s cafe, and the garden where a film’s cast and crew discuss and bring to life the missing pieces of the writer’s legacy - this is a film that leaves room for the unknown.
This is Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s first feature. The film stars César-award-winning actor Zita Hanrot and Motell Foster, and features a soundtrack by singer Sabine McCalla.
The event is supported by the Department of Art, The Menil Collection, and the Center for African and African American Studies at Rice University.
Free and open to the public.
