A film by Alice Diop (2016, 38 min). Screening followed by Q&A with director Alice Diop, Brent Edwards and Nora Philippe.
Part of the film series "Blackness in French and Francophone Film" organized by the Columbia Maison Française and co-sponsored by the School of the Arts.
Alice Diop’s short film charts the ragged terrain of masculinity as it follows a band of young men pacing through a modern city, acting in the way society and their friends expect “men” to act. Their interior monologues, however, reveal other desires. For the director, “We do not listen enough to men on this subject.” Alice Diop deservedly took home the Cesar Award (France's version of the Oscars) for best short film for Vers la tendresse. A searingly eloquent and poetic depiction of marginalized masculinity, Diop's film investigates the inner lives of several young men living in the suburbs of Paris, capturing their musings on race, love, sexuality and identity. Her probing is both pointed and also empathetic, and the result is a truly intimate and beautiful exploration of what it means to be a man living on the periphery of a society that is not always welcoming.
Columbia University co-sponsors of Blackness in French and Francophone Film: Maison Française; School of the Arts; Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality; Institute for African Studies; Columbia Global Centers/Paris; European Institute; and Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities
Film series presented with support from the Paul LeClerc Centennial Fund, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, la Scam, and the Knapp Family Foundation.