Long before it began, the 50my The Deauville American Film Festival made headlines: after the dismissal of its director Bruno Barde for alleged sexual harassment, the reins of the festival were entrusted to his close collaborator Aude Hesbert, who had to endure a succession of controversies following the reorganisation of its jury. In the cinemas too, a clear and eloquent transfer of power was taking place between two moments in American cinema: its proud, conquering, predominantly male and white history, and a present that has worked to the point of becoming obsessed with the question of the representation of its minorities and is determined to turn the tables in the other direction.
At the Morny cinema you could go through the history of American cinema at full speed through fifty emblematic films: there were also rambo (Ted Kotcheff, 1982), whichIntolerance (1916), by D.W. Griffith, Do the right thing (Spike Lee, 1989) face to face Gone with the Wind (1939, Victor Fleming). Alongside this, there was a complete retrospective of James Gray, who came to give a master class and inaugurate – as tradition dictates – his beach hut.
History and present
In this small New York Jewish world that the filmmaker has not stopped exploring, his latest film, Time for Armageddon (2022), saw the emergence of a pure alterity, of a reversal of perspective: suddenly, the Grayian microcosm was observed from the edge of the black condition. Institutional racism infiltrated to the point of destroying a childhood friendship. Time for ArmageddonIt is a bit of a fundamental work, the bridge that united the two sides of this programme, history and the present, which was performed in official competition.
Of the fourteen independent films, five had a common agenda: that of following African-American characters who are no longer understood as alters through a “white gaze,” but are captured by themselves, in the heart of their intimacy. A single exercise is joined by various responses ranging from naivety to the most perfect pessimism.
In Color bookDirector David Fortune films a tremendously simple story: that of a recently widowed black father who cares alone for his young son who suffers from Down syndrome. Between everyday difficulties and the paternal epiphany, the film revolves around a subtle theme: a crossing of the city of Atlanta so that the son can attend his first baseball game. Here the disability relegates the racial issue to the background, but everything is bathed in a light of benevolence and of surmountable difficulties. Captured in a cottony, almost sleepy black and white, the film falls into an error: believing that loving the characters consists of making them exemplary, angelic and that they will soon be corny.
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