Original Film Title: Le retour des femmes colibris
Director of Photography: Patricia Kaersenhout, Ravi Breukers
Director’s Name: Patricia Kaersenhout
Writer’s Name: Patricia Kaersenhout
Producer: Patricia Kaersenhout
Country of Origin: Netherlands
Country of Filming: France
Language: French
Runtime: 18 minutes 23 seconds
Film Description:
The film takes as a starting point the famous Artist and writers conference from 1956 which took place in the Sorbonne in Paris. This conference was organized entirely by Black women, but no women got the podium
As an honorary member, Josephine Baker was mostly formally involved with the Congress, which certainly had political significance. Christiane Yandé Diop, wife of Alioune Diop (founder of the famous bookstore Présence Africaine) was one of the organizers. She is 97 years old and her voice is present in the film.
Black women were at the forefront of an international network of solidarity between Africans and people of the African diaspora. The sisters Jeanne and Paulette Nardal played an important role in the creation of Négritude, a French literary and ideological movement from the 1930s. Members of the movement felt united by their common origins and aversion to the racism in the French colonial empire . Paulette Nardal who mastered English well, became an important cultural intermediary between the Anglophone Harlem Renaissance writers and the Francophone students from Africa and the Caribbean. Three of them would later become the founders of the Négritude movement: Aimé Césaire from Martinique, Léopold Sédar Senghor from Senegal, and Léon -Gontran Damas from French Guiana (les Trois Pères ) . Paul Hazoumé , also known as the father of African literature, is less well known, but also involved in founding of the movement.