Photo courtesy of UWM
Although it’s called the Festival of Films in French, not much French is heard in some of the films programmed in recent years. For example, the 2020 festival includes Fahavalo, Madagascar 1947, a film about a little-known rebellion on the island with scarcely more than a few sentences in French. The documentary is mostly in Malagasy, the indigenous language.
The broad parameters of the Festival of Films in French have evolved by design. The name acknowledges that its mission extends beyond the cinema of France to include French-language movies from Quebec, Haiti and former African colonies. Even that definition became too narrow in recent years for some selections from nations that had once belonged to the French empire. “We want to represent the full array of places where French is part of the fabric,” explains the festival’s co-director, Anita Alkhas. “Many languages are heard in these films.”
Fahavalo is a Malagasy word for enemies and refers to the natives who took arms against the French colonists. Several aged men and women who participated in the rebellion are interviewed in the film. Their memories are linked by archival footage and still photos from the colonial period. Madagascar is a large island some 250 miles from Africa’s eastern coast. Contemporary scenes from one of its cities resemble a port town on the French Mediterranean shore.
The 1947 rebellion was led by indigenous soldiers returning from service with the French army in World War II. They naively expected support from the U.S. None was forthcoming, and the upheaval was crushed, largely by French troops from other African colonies, especially Senegal and Algeria. France granted independence to the island in 1960.
Several interviewees discuss the roots of the unrest in the compulsory labor system that drafted men to build roads, bridges and other public works. However, Fahavalo isn’t a coherent chronicle of the rebellion but a patchwork of memories, including a mother hiding from French troops with a crying baby at her breast. Fascinating anecdotes are collected—the sort of things often omitted from history books. Several veterans of the rebellion speak of the protection afforded by talismans, ritual bathing before battle and the advice offered by spirits. A visit to the National Archives, which houses records from the French administration, includes endless lists of suspected rebels along with a report from a district police prefect that Senegalese troops fired at “a fairy with one breast” that flew overhead while issuing orphic pronouncements.
The documentary’s director, Marie-Clémence Andriamonta-Paes, will present Fahavalo in person at its screening, 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22.
This year’s festival also includes recent, classic and silent films from France, Haiti, Quebec, Morocco and Senegal plus Israeli and Swiss co-productions. “It’s a good mix of documentary and features. It’s about breaking down stereotypical images,” says festival co-director Sarah Davies Cordova.
The Festival of Films in French runs Feb. 14-23 at the UW-Milwaukee Union Cinema, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd. Admission is free. For more information, visit uwm.edu/french-film-festival.
