Africa and France: Postcolonial Cultures, Migration, and Racism

5. From mirage to image: Contest(ed)ing Space in Diasporic Films (1955–2011)

5 From mirage to image Contest(ed)ing Space in Diasporic Films (1955–2011) And then there was no more Empire all of a sudden Its victories were air, its dominions dirt . . . The map that had seeped its stain on a schoolboy’s shirt Like red ink on a blotter, battles, long sieges. —Derek Walcott1 ThesymbiotictieslinkingAfricaandFranceareincontrovertiblefactsofhistory. The French presence in Africa has received extensive scrutiny, yet more recently attention has shifted toward those populations of African descent (usually former colonial subjects), immigrants or ethnic minorities (either naturalized subjects or citizens), residing in the French hexagon.2 Findings have underscored the complexity and multidimensionality of this phenomenon and pointed to a broad range of discourses organized around such diverse cultural, political, and social questions as assimilation, incorporation, Islam, globalization, and secularism. On the one hand, European metropolitan centers have continued to exercise a magnetic effect in attracting labor from the global south, yet on the other we have witnessed a disquieting increase in antiimmigrant sentiment and intolerance toward migrant subjects. This has generated revisions to government policy and in some cases blurred the gap between domestic and foreign policy. Research has privileged late twentieth- /early twenty-first-century experiences and in some cases obfuscated the longer history of bilateral relations between the two continents. Yet, much can also be learned from displacing our focus and according attention to the late-colonial/early-postcolonial pe- From mirage to image 107 riod, and from relocating developments during both a pre-independence and post-migratory period. Several films with Afro/Francocentrist concerns made in France by African filmmakers during the 1950s and 1970s offer improved contextualization.3 Examination of the gravitational forces at work in pulling/ pushing Africans to Paris provides insights to the complex process of demystification and the various ways in which mirages of the metropolis, disseminated throughcolonialschoolingandaccompanyingpropagandistmechanisms, have been dismantled. In turn, these films have also emerged as precursors to recent debates on the politics of hospitality and treatment of clandestine, illegal , irregular, or undocumented subjects. Patterns of immigration and government responses to these have become inseparable from the actual subjects addressed by African and/or minority filmmakers. Films have provided an effective mechanism with which to explore territorial displacement and spatial reconfiguration and to more accurately contextualize the shifting global landscape of African/French postcolonial relations. Additionally, films have also included production at extra-hexagonal sites within the European Union itself as a consequence of new intra-European funding structures and modifications to regulations concerning population mobility within that geographic zone. These adjustments are historically relatively recent and have not always been sufficiently anticipated or accounted for by film critics. For example, while acknowledging the vibrancy and “the diversity of movements in African cinema” at the end of the 1980s, Manthia Diawara’s prognostic for African cinema remained for the most part very much Africa (as continent) centric.4 In contrast to Diawara’s ideas, not only Africa but also both Africa and Europe are now relevant for African cinema. A cursory overview of box office figures provides us with interesting information on the broad range of themes that have provided the subject matter of films made about African, Antillean, and ethnic minority populations in France (See Table 5.1). Whether made by established French filmmakers or newer directors whose backgrounds (Algeria, Martinique, Tunisia, and so forth) reflect the long history of African-French contact, these films allow us to better gauge the treatment and presentation of the history of race relations in France while also indicating a correlation between political debates and audience interest in a range of thematics and sociocultural issues. The breakthrough occurred in 1986 with the release of Thomas Gilou’s film Black Mic Mac, which provided a humorous treatment of the African community in Paris. Rachid Bouchareb’s Indigènes, on the subject of North African soldiers who fought for France in the Second World War, was a major domestic and international Table 5.1. Films made in France on Black communities/presence, the banlieues, memory, and slavery Director Film Theme Box Office Year Rachid Bouchareb Indigènes/Days of Glory Memory/North Africa 3,227,502 2006 Mathieu Kassovitz La haine/Hate Banlieues 2,042,070 1995 Lionel Steketee Case départ/Back to square one Slavery 1,768,971 2011 Laurent Cantet Entre les murs/The Class Banlieues 1,612,356 2008 Lucien Jean-Baptiste La première étoile/Meet the...