Paris as a haven for American Blacks: Alan Govenar's MYTH OF A COLORBLIND FRANCE

The not-so-aptly titled documentary MYTH OF A COLORBLIND FRANCE -- which makes this storied country of hoped-for Liberté, égalité, fraternité seem more negative than it is (or at least was) -- actually offers viewers the opportunity to discover or maybe remind themselves of just how welcoming France became for African-Americans starting with World War I and continuing very nearly through present-day rise of nasty white nationalism in far too many countries worldwide, including the USA (which hardly needs more of this shit).  No country is really colorblind unless its populace is actually blind, a condition that maybe exists in an old Star Trek episode or a nice aphorism ("In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king"). Racism might exist everywhere, one speaker points out, "but in France, I could do something about it."

As co-writer (with Jason Johnson-Spinos) and director of this fine new documentary, Alan Govenar (The Beat Hotel, You Don't Need Feet to Dance), shown at right, offers us viewers a wonderful and rich contribution to the history of African-American culture and the part that France (well, mostly Paris) played in all this.

While the filmmaker hits the expected high points -- Josephine Baker (below), James Baldwin (further below), Richard Wright -- he also includes a lot more examples of lesser lights whose interesting stories and thoughtful musings add much to this history of Black ex-pats in Paris. 

And, yes, as certain reviews have pointed out, the documentary jumps all over the place, back and forth from person to person, time period to time period. Yet what it has to tell us is so worth hearing (and seeing) that TrustMovies certainly did not mind these travels. 

My least favorite sections are given to some music-and-poetry improvisations that seemed to me a bit puerile, yet whenever that poet speaks of his experiences and philosophy, the movie immediately gets back on track. (That's poet James Emanuel, left, with saxophonist Chansse Evans, below.) 

We learn about everyone from famous 19th Century playwright Victor Séjour to jazz musician Sidney Bechet, the famous Bricktop club, mystery writer Chester Himes and especially the still-going-strong sculptor/poet/novelist Barbara Chase-Riboud (below), whose novel Sally Hemings became a kind of touchstone for the continuing American hypocrisy regarding slavery and its history. 

Of special note (among a lot that's already pretty special) is famous subway graffiti artist known as Quik (below), who tells us of his first trip to Europe and what happened on his first morning out and about in (I think it was) Amsterdam. 

Even if there is information you will already have known present in the documentary, much of this is well worth recalling, and what and who you will not have known about should make the film a must-see for anyone interested in Paris, history, and Black lives and culture -- then and now.

From First Run Features and running 86 minutes, Myth of a Colorblnd France opened this weekend in virtual theaters across the country.  Click here to see where and how you can view the film.

Alan Govenar's YOU DON'T NEED FEET TO DANCE introduces a bubbly NYC immigrant

You may not need feet to dance, but you do need a less heavily-accented voice to narrate your movie about an exceptionally energetic, positive-thinking emigrant from Guinea, West Africa, in New York City. The subject of Alan Govenar's new documentary is a fellow named Sidiki Conde, who, as a child, contracted a case of polio that left him with tiny, thin and mostly useless legs and feet. How he contends with this handicap -- in fact, turns it into something uniquely his own, as he negotiates his way around the city (of course, he lives in a fifth-floor walk-up apartment) managing to earn his living by making music and dance while teaching others with handicaps -- is the meat of this inspiring and surprising film.

The last time we wrote about filmmaker Govenar, shown at right, he was covering, rather beautifully and nostalgically, the beat generation in Paris in his documentary The Beat Hotel, using all sort of interesting film techniques to bring back Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso and their ilk in those good old Left Bank days. His new film could not seem more different, as the camera, all in color this time, remains on Sidiki and his immediate surroundings almost every minute, as this sexy, funny and utterly vital fellow acts as our tour guide and narrator of his life here in New York City.

It's as narrator that I might have wished for more, mainly in the form of English subtitles with which to decipher his words. I certainly understood many of them, but key words and phrases along the way were lost in his lilting but often fudgily imprecise pronunciations. (Maybe the eventual DVD release will provide those subtitles.) Meanwhile we have energetic visuals to sustain us.

Mr Govenar begins his film as Sidiki awakens and starts his day with a bath -- his strong, muscular torso clearly makes up for his lack of useful legs and feet -- then dressing and winding his way down those five flights and off on his way to the local Mosque. (He's Muslim and so we see him praying along with the other men; "He's an inspiration to me!" notes the Imam.)

Indeed this is a man for whom nearly everything seems both doubly strenuous and yet, given his positive attitude, somehow uplifting. A friend insists that Sidiki is not disabled because he can do all things that others can do. Yet this seems a little too Norman Vincent Peale.  He tells us of his history, and we see a few old photos, but mainly the movie concentrates on the now, as he teaches classes for the handicapped, practices his music and does some busking on the city's streets and in its parks.

Toward the end, we learn how old the man is, and it's a surprise. Given his looks and his energy level, I would have guessed ten, even twenty years younger. (His outfit also suddenly changes from red to blue, indicating, I would guess, that a new day has dawned.) In the final few minutes, when he speaks of his now dead mother, the movie at last wraps us in some deep feeling.

Early on we learn, unless I misunderstood what he was telling us, that the man's own children are dead ("I didn't have enough to give them a life"). While I think that Govenar might have probed more deeply and uncovered more layers to Sidiki, I also suspect that M. Conde prefers to keep things on the level they remain: light, inspirational and uplifting.

As the movie goes along, you'll become aware that we have not yet seen Sidiki dance. When the moment finally arrives, I have to say it is a bit of a disappointment because, as energetic as his dancing is, it also makes you realize how important to dance is the lower half of the body. I'm happy to have learned of Sidiki, and hope I'll someday see him on the street or busking in the park, so I can approach him, thank him for his life and work and put some money in his basket.

YOU DON'T NEED FEET TO DANCE, from First Run Features and lasting 88 minutes, opens this Friday, March  22, in New York City at the Quad Cinema. Though this is the only currently scheduled playdate, as with other FRF films, this one, too, should eventually be available on DVD.

Alan Govenar's THE BEAT HOTEL takes us back to bohemian/beatnik Paris of the 50s

Do the names Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky and William Burroughs set your heart aflutter? (My upstairs neighbor runs the other direction when he hears the roster.) For some, these are/were the kind of guys you might like to read but wouldn't want to live with. You get the chance to do the latter, possibly as closely as you'd care to, in the new documen-tary THE BEAT HOTEL that takes us back to the beatnik/bohemian Paris of the period between 1957 - 1963 and to the shabby (but hardly chic) little hotel where they, and others of their ilk, resided.

Directed by Alan Govenar (shown at left) and with some smart animation by Blas Garcia and Alan Hatchett (who also edited the film), and some even funnier drawings from Elliot Rudie (like the one of Burroughs, below), the documentary is a lot of fun and remarkably alive. This is due in no small measure to the wonderful photography by Scottish shutterbug Harold Chapman (who lived in the hotel during this time and to a large extent narrates the movie) -- bringing back the shadow side of the "city of lights" from a half-century past. Chapman's moody, lovely, on-the-fly photos capture the people and the time with artful, seemingly artless ease, and one of the most interesting (even to a non-photographer like TrustMovies) sections of the film involves Chapman's explanation of how, first step to last, he created what he calls, quite charmingly and rightly, his highly original kind of "dustbin photography."

Probably but a very few of my readership will be old enough to recall the era of Europe on $5 a Day (Arthur Frommer's series of wildly popular travel books that actually began in 1957, the same year as does this film). If it seems impossible to imagine now -- what with inflation, the Euro and the exchange rate practically reversed from the time in which it favored Americans traveling abroad rather than Europeans coming over here -- one really could do Europe in this affordable manner. So when the movie tells us that the "beats" who stayed at this cheap, no-name hotel paid but 10 francs per day (then, the equivalent of about 50 cents), we can only marvel. Of course, this got you a very tiny room: The small hotel had but one bath for everyone and hot water maybe two-to-three times per week.

The hotel's proprietress, Madame Rochou (that's she behind the bar, slightly to the right) -- who served sandwiches to the local police, mostly to keep them off track of the drugs and local prostitutes (some of whom the police themselves made use of) -- appeared to have an appreciation of artists and no interest at all in their art. But she did have the need to create, the narrator recalls, "a little resistance movement against all authority." Which fit perfectly with the needs of the her hotel's occupants. Chatty and all-over-the-place, the movie sometimes seems as discombobulated as were the hotels' residents. But it is always interesting.

Along the way we get a slice of these artists' works -- the poem by Ginsberg (shown at right) to his Aunt Rose, a history of Burroughs' Naked Lunch (or, as we learn, due to a Freudian typo, "Naked Lust") and lots more. I usually resent "re-enactments" in documentaries (unless like James Marsh, one does them so well that they fool me). Here, the re-enactments are done with enough wit and charm -- plus black-and-white photography and actors who look like their subjects -- that these engage us surprisingly well. One, in which Burroughs (shown below) and his associates put on a "magic" act, using light and film to make the writer disappear, is a real delight.

Some critics dismissed the movie as yet another tired attempt at nostalgia. This is simply not true. Perhaps the real audience for this documentary are senior citizens like myself, who remember this time, and its people, and its artistic protest with some fondness, even if we ourselves were nowhere near the creative front of the avant-garde. Thanks to the work of Mr. Govenar and his crew, and to the photos and narration of Mr. Chapman, we can understand this time/place/cast from a point of genuine nearness and the kind of personal angle that, until now, we've never experienced.

The Beat Hotel, 82 minutes, from First Run Features, opened theatrically yesterday here in New York City at the Cinema Village.  To view all currently scheduled upcoming playdates, with cities and theaters, click here.  Knowing FRF, you'll also be able to catch up with the film on DVD, eventually.