Euzhan Palcy: acceptance speech during the medal of recognition ceremony at the National Assembly | Discours d'Euzhan Palcy lors de la remise de la médaille de l'Assemblée Nationale
Wednesday | Mercredi 3 mai 2023
Image: francetvinfo.fr
En français: voir vidéo ci-après
A very touching, moving acceptance speech by Euzhan Palcy
Translation from French by Beti Ellerson
She is indeed the pioneer, the trailblazer for afro-descendant women of France, the French Antilles and beyond!
It's a bit heart-warming. I recently had the honor of receiving an honorary Oscar award, that only one other Frenchwoman has received. I’m speaking about a great woman, our dear Agnès Varda. This recognition gives me great pride and pleasure. But it is one thing to be recognized by one's peers in Los Angeles, though a very different thing to be recognized by one's own in France. And while this recognition reverberated in the international press, when I returned to my country there was nothing or very little. My first film Sugar Cane Alley made me the first black woman to receive a Silver Lion in Venice. And the first also to be awarded a César almost 40 years ago.
Do I have a mission when I create? Yes I do, I create for diversity and more precisely diversity in France. For me, to make films is to discover each other, to be recognized by each other, to accept each other, to come together. When we know the other, we're no longer afraid of them and when we're no longer afraid, we are enriched, we grow up, we pass it on. Very early on I learned two things, that cinema can change the world, and from Aimé Césaire my spiritual father, who said in the depths of despair poetry is a miraculous weapon. And in turn, I wanted to, in my own way, make my cinema a miraculous weapon. The road was scattered with stumbling blocks from the start; at the age of 10, shocked by the fact that my brothers and sisters “nègres”—and I know that word offends some of you, but I use it in good spirit—I find it charged with both poetry and history. So my brothers and sisters “nègres” were conspicuous by their absence from the screens—the large ones and the small ones—I was torn between the pleasure and the fascination that was exerted on me by the films I saw and at the same time the persistent wound of this exclusion.
My relationship with cinema, my desire to do it, have been shaped by this paradox, and throughout my practice as a filmmaker, in Martinique, Guadeloupe, Los Angeles, South Africa, Reunion or Paris, this paradox has never left me. I didn't want to make of myself a pure and hard militant filmmaker. I wanted to approach this problem from various angles, whether historical fiction, animated film, comedy or documentary. When I devoted a few years of my life to dissidents, those resistance fighters that Metropolitan France didn't want to recognize. I wanted my tribute to them to go well beyond a simple documentary and it was in this same place that once the film was completed, I managed to bring these very old ladies and these very old gentlemen who at the twilight of their lives finally obtained the recognition from the institutions of the country for which they had fought. In this time of hatred and darkness, to quote Aime Cesaire once again, we need to work together more than ever, and above all I would like to add, to remember one thing, which has always haunted me, we are only fragile voyagers on this earth. I also say that life for us is not a given, otherwise no one would want to die; it is loaned to us, so let's live well, let's try to work together and love each other. So that we can enrich each other. So it's a special day for me since it concretizes this recognition, no longer that of my peers wherever they are from, but from my fellow citizens, and it is for me from this particular desire, that I accept this medal today with such pride. Thank you.
