EXCLUSIVE: T A P E Collective has acquired UK rights to The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, the characteristic debut from visible artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, and can launch the movie in cinemas from July 18th.
Primarily based partly on the essay Surrealist Refugees within the Tropics by Terese Svoboda, the movie explores the life and work of Suzanne Césaire, a author, feminist, and anti-colonial activist from Martinique. Suzanne Césaire was on the coronary heart of the Négritude and Surrealist actions within the Caribbean within the early twentieth Century. Nonetheless, a lot of her work was neglected and overshadowed by her husband’s Aime Césaire’s political profession, and submit WWII, she stopped publishing altogether.
The mysteries of Césaire’s work and life have been an open query of Martiniquan, French, and Caribbean historical past. Hunt-Ehrlich researched the author over 5 years for this movie, talking with members of the family and biographers alongside studying letters and first sources.
The movie is an element narrative and half abstraction. Zita Hanrot stars as an actress and new mom who makes an attempt to grapple with the legacy of the real-life determine she’s alleged to be enjoying: Suzanne Césaire.
Shot on luminous Kodak 16mm on location in Miami, Florida, and New York, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire debuted finally yr’s Rotterdam Movie Competition earlier than enjoying the London, Toronto, and New York Movie Festivals.
Producers on the pic embody Sophie Luo and Mike S. Ryan. Haitian-American singer-songwriter Sabine McCalla scored the movie. Hunt-Ehrlich directs from a screenplay she additionally wrote. Her movie work has screened on the Venice Biennale, Tate Trendy, the Whitney in New York, and the Berlin Movie Competition.
“We’re really honoured to be working with Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, a distinguished artist taking the leap to the massive display as we proceed to distribute and display movies which play with type and honour other ways of telling tales,” T A P E Collective’s Isra Al Kassi advised us in an announcement.
“We proceed the interrogation of the erasure of girls, particularly Black ladies in cinema, historical past, and literature – on this event it’s Suzanne Cesaire, a lady whose legacy Hunt-Ehrlich captures with a phenomenal lens whereas breaking extra than simply the fourth wall.”
