Part IX–Image Gallery: African/Diasporan Women Reframing Screen Identities

Part IX–Image Gallery:African/Diasporan Women Reframing Screen Identities Beti Ellerson African-descendant women take control of their image. Deconstructing stereotyped, exoticized representations, reconstructing their own image outside of the hegemonic frame. And in so doing offer realistic paradigms for seeing, alternative manners of looking. Through a selection of collages, this gallery highlights several themes explored in the Close-Up with visual assemblages of many of the women featured therein. The Pantheonization of Josephine Baker Diverting the colonial gaze, subverting—even mocking it, Josephine Baker reinvents her persona—1925. Almost one hundred years later, she enters the Pantheon of France (fig. 1). End Page 452 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. A collage of images around the pantheonization of Josephine Baker. The ceremony on November 30, 2021, in Paris, projects on giant screens along rue Soufflot leading to the Pantheon in the Latin Quarter, revealing through texts, speeches, and images, key moments of her life. Photos by author, from left to right, top to bottom: (a) A montage projected onto the Pantheon in blue, white, and red. (b) Josephine Baker's son Brian Bouillon-Baker standing next to her image in the interior of the Pantheon, after the ceremony. (c) A collage of Josephine Baker affixed on a building, representing her dual identity as American and French. (d) A montage on the facade of the Pantheon displayed after the ceremony. Collage by Beti Ellerson. Women's TransAfrican Cinematic Practice and Activism This collage of images highlights four women trailblazers featured in the Close-Up. Pioneering women who have and continue to make major contributions to trans-African cinematic practice and activism (fig. 2). Groundbreaking journalist Annette Mbaye d'Erneville, valedictorian in the inaugural class of SORAFOM studio-school, the Parisian-based Radio Broadcasting Company of Overseas France, which opened its doors in 1954, uses her microphone as her weapon, in her combat to give voice to Africa—and to African women—as they define African history from an African perspective. Alimata Salambéré/Ouedraogo, a founding member of FESPACO, was honored at its fiftieth anniversary in 2019 for her lifelong work in the promotion of African cinema. Euzhan Palcy, who received an honorary Oscar for the ensemble of her work in 2022 and a medal of recognition End Page 453 by the French National Assembly in 2023, among many other awards throughout her career, gave passionate acceptance speeches during both ceremonies. June Givanni, eminent curator of African and black diaspora cinema, created the Pan African Cinema Archive as an extension of her work amassed during many decades in the film and broadcasting sectors. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Images from left to right, top to bottom: (a) Annette Mbaye d'Erneville. Screen grab by author from Mére-bi / The Mother (2008), by Ousmane William Mbaye. (b) Image of book Alimata Salambéré / Ouedraogo: itinéraire et leçons de vie d'une femme debout tr. Alimata Salambéré / Ouedraogo: the journey and life lessons of a woman of principle by Yacouba Traoré, on display during Fespaco. Screen grab by author from Fespaco News 2019. (c) Euzhan Palcy during acceptance speech at the ceremony for honorary Oscar in 2022. Screen grab by author. (d) June Givanni, Movements show. Courtesy of June Givanni. Collage by Beti Ellerson. Sarah Maldoror, the Matriarch of TransAfrican Cinema world-Making Beyond Borders In 1956, Sarah Maldoror, a founding member of the theater troupe Les Griots, envisioned in the formation of this group of African, Antillean, Afro-European artists, a means to redefine the roles of black people as agents of their own history. Arriving in Paris from Gers in the late 1940s, it was then that the life of the woman that she came to be commenced. Les Griots End Page 454 functioned as an extension of the identity she had constructed in choosing the name Maldoror: "to convey the oral tradition of her cultural heritage." Ponder this collage of Maldoror with signature afro. Henda Ducados, Maldoror's youngest daughter, recalls while growing up, her mother, "radical-the-revolution," coiffed in a big afro. Crowned in full glory with natural hair prominently displayed, this iconic representation of...