Raoul Peck

Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination

Edited by Toni Pressley-Sanon and Sophie Saint-Just - Interviewee Raoul Peck - Contributions by Olivier Barlet; Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken M.D.; Jane Bryce; Myriam J. A. Chancy; Rachel Gabara; Tama Hamilton-Wray; Martin Munro; Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall; Joëlle Vitiello and John P. Walsh

This comprehensive collection of essays dedicated to the work of filmmaker Raoul Peck is the first of its kind. The essays, interview, and keynote addresses collected in Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination focus on the ways in which power and politics traverse the work of Peck and are central to his cinematic vision. At the heart of this project is the wish to gather diverse interpretations of Raoul Peck’s films in a single volume. The essays included herein are written by scholars from different disciplines and are placed alongside Peck’s own articulations around the nature of power and politics.

Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination provides an introduction to Peck’s better-known films, interpretations of his rarely seen and recently released early films, and original analyses of his more recent films. It endeavors to explore the ways in which the dual themes of power and politics inform the work of Peck by taking a multidisciplinary approach to contextualizing his filmography. It culls contributions from scholars who write from a wide range of disciplines including history, film studies, literary studies, postcolonial studies, French and Francophone studies and African studies. The result is a volume that offers divergent perspectives and frames of expertise by which to understand Peck’s oeuvre that continues to expand and deepen.

Lexington Books

Pages: 310 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-0-7391-9878-0 • Hardback • December 2015 • $133.00 • (£102.00)

978-0-7391-9879-7 • eBook • December 2015 • $126.00 • (£97.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism, Performing Arts / Film / Direction & Production

Raoul Peck

Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This comprehensive collection of essays dedicated to the work of filmmaker Raoul Peck is the first of its kind. The essays, interview, and keynote addresses collected in Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination focus on the ways in which power and politics traverse the work of Peck and are central to his cinematic vision. At the heart of this project is the wish to gather diverse interpretations of Raoul Peck’s films in a single volume. The essays included herein are written by scholars from different disciplines and are placed alongside Peck’s own articulations around the nature of power and politics.

Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination provides an introduction to Peck’s better-known films, interpretations of his rarely seen and recently released early films, and original analyses of his more recent films. It endeavors to explore the ways in which the dual themes of power and politics inform the work of Peck by taking a multidisciplinary approach to contextualizing his filmography. It culls contributions from scholars who write from a wide range of disciplines including history, film studies, literary studies, postcolonial studies, French and Francophone studies and African studies. The result is a volume that offers divergent perspectives and frames of expertise by which to understand Peck’s oeuvre that continues to expand and deepen.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 310 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-0-7391-9878-0 • Hardback • December 2015 • $133.00 • (£102.00)

978-0-7391-9879-7 • eBook • December 2015 • $126.00 • (£97.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism, Performing Arts / Film / Direction & Production

Author

Toni Pressley-Sanon is assistant professor in the Department of Africology and African American Studies at Eastern Michigan University.

Sophie Saint-Just is visiting assistant professor of French at Williams College.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Sophie Saint-Just and Toni Pressley-Sanon

History is Too Important to Leave to Hollywood: Colonialism, Genocide and Memory in the Films of Raoul Peck
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall

Disrupting Conventional Film Structure: Letters, Voice-Over, and Traumatic Irruption in Raoul Peck’s Films
Joëlle Vitiello

“My Story is Not a Nice Story”: Sometimes in April (2005) and the Rwandan Genocide Film
Jane M. Bryce

Framing the Dispersal in Diaspora: Raoul Peck, Transnational Filmmaker
Sophie Saint-Just

On the Edge of Silence: l’(in)-imaginable and Gendered Representations of the Rwandan Genocide from Photography to Raoul Peck’s Sometimes in April
Myriam J. A. Chancy

Haitian National Identity and Gender in Raoul Peck’s Moloch Tropical
Tama Hamilton-Wray

Interrogating Images: Lumumba: Death of a Prophet as Reflexive AutoBiographical Documentary
Rachel Gabara

Postcolonialism and the Poetics of Pragmatism: Raoul Peck’s Fatal Assistance and Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour
Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken

“Haiti mon amour”
John P. Walsh

Lòt Bo and Anba Dlo: The Dialectics of Raoul Peck’s Désounen: Dialogue with Death
Toni Pressley-Sanon

Politics, Masculinity, and Apocalyptic Memory in L’homme sur les quais
Martin Munro

Lessons from the Cinema of Raoul Peck
Olivier Barlet
Translated by Sophie Saint-Just

Stolen Images or Footnotes: Keynote Address to the 2013 Haitian Studies Association Conference
Raoul Peck
Translated by Sophie Saint-Just

“Beyond Help?”: Address by Raoul Peck, Conference on “Beyond Aid: From Charity to Solidarity”, Frankfurt, Germany – February 20, 2014
Raoul Peck
Translated by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall

About the Contributors