Les Bicots-nègres, vos voisins

LES BICOTS NEGRES, VOS VOISINS, Med Hondo’s second feature, was considered by many as to be an UFO, an unassimilable filmic object: although the film won the Golden Tanit at the Carthage Film festival in 1974, it only acquired English subtitles in 2019. The maverick director offers one of his boldest cinematic experiments here, taking the form of a long essay with multiple endings and durations (one version is three hours long) and eight seemingly loosely related sequences (in which he trades dramatic unity for organic unity between filmmaker and subjects).These involve a detour through a long opening sequence, the invocation of the memory of colonialism and pervertedindependence, a subjunctive image restaging the neocolonial pact in an imaginary garden party sequence, creating in effect a masterclass on neocolonialism (regrettably still pertinent) and a brilliant analysis of the repressive postcolonial state apparatus. Last, but not least, he examines the experiences and living conditions of migrants, their affective miseries and their coming into consciousness and initial protests against the system, concluding with a beautiful homage to African cinema as a desirable cinema that has found its place alongside those who struggle.

In the presence of Aboubakar Sanogo und Zahra Hondo.