GIANT OCS – SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23 AT 10:15 p.m. – DOCUMENTARY

When Ida Lupino was admitted to the Directors Guild of America, the union of film directors in 1950, she was the only woman in the organization, which numbered over a thousand members. So much so that the general assemblies started with this address: « Gentlemen & Miss Lupino », which gives its title to the documentary by Clara and Julia Kuperberg. For a few years, between 1949 and 1953, Ida Lupino was the only practicing director in Hollywood, and the film seeks to identify the singularity of this position.

From a British family of entertainers, Ida Lupino arrived in Hollywood at the age of 16 in 1934. Paramount, who took her under contract, wanted to make her ?British Jean Harlow?. It is true that the young woman is more than her age and very quickly finds the roles of a lost girl, traveling companions of bad boys, who then hold the top of the bill. One of his most famous roles remains that of Marie, the stoic accomplice of Humphrey Bogart in The great Escape (1941), the Raoul Walsh.

Psychological realism

Former child prodigy (she had memorized all the female roles of the Shakespearean repertoire at the age of 10), Ida Lupino struggles to comply with the discipline of the studios. At Paramount, then at Warner, she spends more time at home, where the Zukors and Warners “suspended” her because she refused uninteresting roles, than on the sets. And, when she turns, she gets bored while ?The others have interesting things to do?.

Read also: Ida Lupino, tough filmmaker facing Hollywood

In 1949, she founded with her husband, Collier Young, a production company, The Filmakers Inc. When the director of one of the first feature films of the new studio fell ill, Ida Lupino took her place, and that was where really begins the film of the Kuperberg sisters. Before loving you the film which she resumed during the shooting, has as its protagonist a very young penniless woman, single and pregnant.

Later will come Outrage, almost clinical description of the trauma caused by rape, and Bigamie, nuanced picture of a triangular relation. The extracts that illustrate Gentlemen & Miss Lupino, as well as the interventions of American academics clearly show how the director has kept herself in balance between a feminism, from which she has always publicly distanced herself, and a concern for psychological realism, which took her into ambiguous territories that Hollywood preferred to ignore at the time. On these situations torn from everyday life, she threw a stylized look, inspired by the black films of Walsh, Nicholas Ray or Jean Negulesco, in which she had filmed.

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GIANT OCS – SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23 AT 10:15 p.m. – DOCUMENTARY

Psychological realism

Read also: Ida Lupino, tough filmmaker facing Hollywood

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> Dracula sensible

At the border between musical tale, concert and theater, the Dracula of the National Jazz Orchestra (ONJ) ??was imagined for the stage when it was created in December 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic quickly thwarted this fate, but allowed the birth of this magnificent work. On the music of the ONJ, the black and white monotypes of the illustrator, Adèle Maury (winner of the first prize of the Young Talents competition at the Festival d’Angoulême 2020), precipitate the reader-listeners in a closed world, at the same time dark and bright, torn apart by opposing forces. Young Mina searches for her mother and meets Dracula, who was waiting for her. Their voices (performed by women) are soft, their songs sensitive. There is sometimes tenderness, never fear, but moments of musical dissonance, of graphic swirls, which keep intact the richness and ambivalence of this tale until the last moment. For those who wish to extend by the stage, performances are planned in the coming months.

« Dracula ?, illustrations by Adèle Maury, music by the National Jazz Orchestra. ONJ Records, L’Autre Distribution, 92 pages, 25 euros. From 6 years old.

> Window on fear

“Look out the window”, by Katerina Gorelik.

Beware of appearances, this pretty album says mischievously to toddlers. Thanks to a set of windows opening on each page, we believe we see here a house on fire, there the wolf swallowing up the grandmother. We turn, and it’s just a gentle dragon toasting his toast, while Wolf sits quietly at the table for tea. It works both ways: you think you see an “adorable old lady” before coming face to face with a witch and her pot. Exclamations guaranteed when you discover the back kitchen invaded by insects of Madame Cochon, the great cook.

?Look out of the window?, by Katerina Gorelik, text adapted by Emma Gauthier. Saltimbanque, 60 pages, 15.90 euros. From 3 years old.

> Disguise yourself!

?Mystery in the attic?, by Dorothée de Monfreid.

A group of doggies, cuddly, in the middle of a goose game, hear strange noises in the attic. Rather than face the fearsome enemy with fangs (“But we are not strong enough to beat him”), they opt for disguises, hoping to reverse the fear and scare the monster away. The author Dorothée de Monfreid (Liberation, Pomme d’Api) continues her ?Toutous? series, with a talent for drawing that immediately gives the impression of being at home. The album with cardboard pages is a successful variation on a classic frame.

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> Dracula sensible

« Dracula ?, illustrations by Adèle Maury, music by the National Jazz Orchestra. ONJ Records, L’Autre Distribution, 92 pages, 25 euros. From 6 years old.

> Window on fear

?Look out of the window?, by Katerina Gorelik, text adapted by Emma Gauthier. Saltimbanque, 60 pages, 15.90 euros. From 3 years old.

> Disguise yourself!

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Critique. Brussels, 1958. The Universal Exhibition, “Biggest planetary event since the second world war”, is supposed to give luster to Belgium among the Western nations. But Baron Martens de Neuberg and his deputy in charge of the demonstration, Robert Dumont, have a hard time.

Apart from the famous Atomium sculpture built for the occasion, the second major attraction planned is the reconstruction of a “Congolese village” populated by “True natives”. A comparable show had attracted thousands of spectators at a previous exhibition in 1897, but times have changed. The extras who act as “Wild” are divided. Behind a certain Patrice Lumumba, African voices are now calling for the independence of the Belgian Congo, thus joining those who, in Europe, denounce the racial ideology hidden behind “Colonial work” Belgian.

Read also Laura Nsafou: ?How to keep hope when it suddenly disappears? ”

So begins In the belly of the Congo, third novel by Congolese author Blaise Ndala. A book that explores with panache the complexity of relations, colonial and post-colonial, between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Belgium. The novelist has just won the prestigious Ivoire awards, in Abidjan, Wednesday, October 20, and Ahmadou-Kourouma, at the Geneva Book Fair, Friday.

The cultural richness of the Bakuba people

After the scenario, a second story takes us to 2004 with Tshala, a Congolese student in Belgium. Her grandfather commissioned her to find Nyota, her daughter who had disappeared in Brussels many years before. Tshala will discover that her aunt was precisely one of the slinging extras of the Congolese village of Expo 58. Singing in Latin cantilenas learned at the school of the Belgian mission, she “Broke the codes that suited the Negress coming from the depths of the equatorial forest”.

A third narrative thread is woven by Nyota herself. In a long soliloquy addressed to her niece, she goes back to the origins of the dynasty from which she came, recounts the bravery of her father, King Kena Kwete III, and the cultural richness of the Bakuba people in the pre-colonial Congo.

Read also With his ?Odyssey of the Forgotten?, Khalil Diallo gives migrants back their identity

Finally, the book joins the news with the character of Passy Yakembo, star footballer of the Belgium team, to whom excited supporters shout racist insults during a match. The force of this moment, like an echo of the taunts suffered by the false savages of Expo 58, symbolizes the importance of a history which both Belgium and the Congo must take stock of.

Because there is undoubtedly the true intention of the book, as one of its characters expresses it: ” deliver the word that unties knots, breaks chains and lights up the walker’s path ?. Bet succeeded thanks to the talent of the author, able in a few sentences to take the reader from the darkest years of colonial history to the languor of Congolese rumba, of mortal pain from a punch in the stomach to the passion of a romantic relationship.

“Was he so good looking or had he cast a spell on me to keep me looking so stunning?” “, wonders, with a tasty imperfect subjunctive, Princess Nyota, whom love blinds to the skin color of her white lover.

The ideal country of meeting and mixing

Born in Zaire in 1972 and settled in Canada after studying law in Belgium, Blaise Ndala knows how to be a storyteller, investigator, anthropologist and historian. We feel his pleasure in playing with languages ??- French, Lingala – to enrich his text, while embedding it on each page with a saving humor. We follow with happiness in their adventures the many characters of his great romantic gesture. “Embark with me”, he seems to say, addressing as much to today’s travelers – students as migrants – as to readers on their way, thanks to him, to the ideal country of meeting and miscegenation.

Read also “Les Aquatiques”, the tortuous emancipation of a woman in Central Africa

Thus Tshala expresses it during the story – and through it Blaise Ndala: “Humans have to be able to go where they want, when they want, because that’s all they’ve done since Australopithecus, Cro-Magnon man or whatever left his cave in Africa. . It’s that simple, it seems to me, isn’t it? ”

In the belly of the Congo, from Blaise Ndala, ed. Inkwell memory, Montreal / Le Seuil, Paris / Vallesse, Abidjan.

Kidi Bebey

Read also Laura Nsafou: ?How to keep hope when it suddenly disappears? ”

The cultural richness of the Bakuba people

Read also With his ?Odyssey of the Forgotten?, Khalil Diallo gives migrants back their identity

The ideal country of meeting and mixing

Read also “Les Aquatiques”, the tortuous emancipation of a woman in Central Africa

In the belly of the Congo, from Blaise Ndala, ed. Inkwell memory, Montreal / Le Seuil, Paris / Vallesse, Abidjan.

Kidi Bebey

In the beginning was the verb, it seems. Seductive hypothesis, which calls for others: was the Creator more attentive to the meaning of the words or their sound? In the sense or in the sound? These sinuosities cross Caetano Veloso’s new album, My coconut. Released on October 22, this is his first disc of originals in nine years; it is also the most sensitive and sensual since Book (1997), essential chapter of a discography which is no less so.

Years ago the Brazilian read Joseph and his brothers (1933-1943), the romantic cycle of Thomas Mann, inspired by Genesis. One passage, in particular, captivated him: “Mann writes that after a long walk, at dusk, Jacob lay down on a Gilgal, before resuming his journey”, says the singer, by videoconference. a Gilgal? At first, Veloso believed in a translation error, crossed sources, sifted through his most learned friends with questions: ?According to some interpretations, the Gilgal is a kind of stone altar. Which would explain why several Jewish localities in ancient Palestine are called so? I couldn’t believe it: a place of worship was named after my two closest tropical companions! “

Read also The cannibalistic tropics by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso

Either Gilberto Gil and Gal Costa, with whom Veloso led, at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, a movement straddling the avant-garde and the popular arts, anchored in Salvador de Bahia, but open to the four winds: tropicalism , so. With all due honor, one of the peaks of My coconut is entitled GilGal : on a lascivious bed of percussions, the piece lists a list of master musicians. “He taught me the meaning of sound / I wanted to teach him the soundless of meaning”, sings Veloso in his pure and confident voice. “These words sum up the essence of my relationship with Gil, he explains. I developed my musical skills by watching him play, when we first met in Bahia. In return, Gilberto was interested in my way of thinking, in my way of conceiving the future of Brazilian music. “

« Reforest »

In 2015, the two futurists stopped at the Palais des Congrès, a Parisian stop on a long joint tour. These days, it is the stage of the Philharmonie de Paris that they take turns sharing. Veloso was there on August 28, solo, guitar and vocals; Gil will play there on October 25, in a quintet. An echo of the exhibition devoted to the Amazon currently held there by their compatriot, photographer Sebastiao Salgado. ?Do you know that Salgado planted millions of trees in Brazil? On his initiative, I published a song last year on reforestation, a vital subject, indicates Gilberto Gil, on the sidelines of the concert he gave on October 15 in Roubaix (North), as part of the Tourcoing Jazz Festival. Sebastiao suggested that I baptize her Reforest, because he knows my taste for the prefix ?re-?? »

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Read also The cannibalistic tropics by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso

« Reforest »

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?La France goy?, by Christophe Donner, Grasset, 512 p., ? 24, digital ? 17.

Upon entering Christophe Donner’s office, one is struck by the order of the place, which is also the bright living room of his apartment. The writer has already harnessed himself as a result of France goy, published this fall. On the table to his left, he keeps several books found in second-hand booksellers or online, devoted, among others, to the writer and journalist Léon Daudet (1867-1942), central figure of France goy and text to come. But he keeps in closed white boxes, hardly distinguishable on the wall, the files where his documentation accumulates. Work, with Christophe Donner as in his books, should not be seen too much. We read some 500 pages of France goy at full speed, carried away by its fluidity, without perceiving the four years of labor that the novel required.

His starting point: the campaign for the 2017 presidential election, during which Emmanuel Macron claims to have been Paul Ricoeur’s assistant (1913-2005). Christophe Donner knew the latter well: he lived ten years with the author of Time and story (Seuil, 1983-1985), at the Domaine des Murs blancs, this phalanstery born from the will of the philosopher Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), founder of the review Esprit. Ricoeur is one of the protagonists of The Spirit of Vengeance (Grasset, 1992), alongside Jean Gosset, the author’s grandfather, also a Christian philosopher, hero of the Resistance, who died in the Neuengamme concentration camp at the age of 32. The Spirit of Vengeance makes Jean Gosset the bad conscience of the Esprit group. Ricoeur, through a lawsuit, obtained the withdrawal of his name.

Close proximity to Edouard Drumont

In 2017, therefore, the news gives the writer the desire to return to “The Ricoeur affair” and on the character of his grandfather. Wondering what made him this man « admirable », he realizes that he knows little about his parents. Christophe Donner’s sister, Elisa, living in Brittany with their mother, questions the latter, who reveals to hold correspondence from Jean’s father, Henri Gosset (1874-1948). Originally from Cateau-Cambrésis (Hauts-de-France), son of a worker, physiotherapist who became an assistant to psychiatrist Edgar Bérillon, Henri had married a schoolteacher, Marcelle Bernard, future mother of Jean, herself the daughter of a Communard and close to the anarchists. During his medical studies (aborted), Henri had for his part been linked with Léon Daudet. Son of the writer Alphonse Daudet, Léon had formed a close relationship as a child with the latter’s friend, Edouard Drumont (1844-1917), author of the anti-Semitic bestseller. Jewish France (1885), founder of the Anti-Semitic League in 1889 and, three years later, of the very influential newspaper Free speech. Leon will create, French Action.

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?La France goy?, by Christophe Donner, Grasset, 512 p., ? 24, digital ? 17.

Close proximity to Edouard Drumont

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The Quai Branly Museum is organizing the return to Benin of 26 works from the royal treasures of Abomey, stolen during the French colonial conquests in the 19th century.^e century, and exhibits them from October 26 to 31, before their transfer. Emmanuel Kasarhérou, president of the Quai Branly Museum, explains the work carried out by his institution around objects acquired in a violent manner.

In what political context do these renditions in Benin take place?

In a context that has always been appeased. As soon as the law on the restitution of cultural property in Benin was passed in December 2020, we have multiplied our contacts to build something together. It is not always easy for questions of temporality and agenda, but a museum must know how to adapt, to be attentive to and at the interface of cultural requests which can be thought of differently from one place to another. other. Two curators, one from the Abomey museum and another from the Ouidah museum, came to familiarize themselves with these objects. We are setting up the exhibition together, they will dismantle it and transport the works to Benin.

Read also Twenty-six objects soon to be returned to Benin by the Quai Branly Museum

What is the meaning of the exhibition which will be held from October 26 to 31 at the Musée du Quai Branly?

We have decided with Benin to set up an exhibition, not to do these returns on the sly, with only boxes in transit. We wanted to show these works which have a history: they have been in the collections of France for almost 130 years. In the same way that we cannot take away their ancient history, we cannot erase their French history. We had to tell the complexity of this story. A new era is opening for these works. They return to Benin no longer as objects of worship and power, but as heritage objects, which is new. Each culture must build its heritage, define its perimeter, the grammar, the way in which it is spoken of.

When will the works leave France?

An official act will be signed, under the authority of the two French and Benin presidents, at the beginning of November. The 26 objects will then be under the responsibility of Benin. They will come to reinsert themselves into a space that has evolved without them. A new story will be written.

Do these renditions mark the start of a larger movement?

We have to see with the State because we are talking about national collections. But yes, in the future, groups of objects could be the subject of a law. For three years, we have been working on the identification of objects acquired without consent, in a violent manner. Our role is to better inform the origin of the parts. Requests received by the State relate either to specific cases or to all collections. They have been formulated by countries such as Mali, Chad and Côte d’Ivoire, with which we have a common research program.

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In what political context do these renditions in Benin take place?

Read also Twenty-six objects soon to be returned to Benin by the Quai Branly Museum

What is the meaning of the exhibition which will be held from October 26 to 31 at the Musée du Quai Branly?

When will the works leave France?

Do these renditions mark the start of a larger movement?

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How could Alec Baldwin unknowingly have a loaded gun in his hand? The investigation continues to understand the drama that occurred Thursday, October 21 on a set in New Mexico. The American actor killed, presumably accidentally, the director of photography and injured the director of Rust, the western he was filming and of which he was the producer.

Halyna Hutchins, 42, was evacuated by helicopter on Thursday to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead by medics. Director Joel Souza, 48, was able to leave the hospital after a few hours.

Read also Actor Alec Baldwin who shot deadly on the set of a western

Citing court documents from the searches that took place Friday at Bonanza Creek ranch in Santa Fe, where the filming was taking place, the Santa Fe Reporter indicates that the film crew was rehearsing a scene at the time of the drama. The gunsmith had placed three weapons as accessories on a cart, an assistant director then handed one of them to Alec Baldwin, telling him “Cold weapon”, which in cinema jargon means that the gun is not loaded. Assistant director “Did not know that there was active ammunition in the accessory”, according to searches. The clothes worn by Alec Baldwin during the accident were turned over to investigators, along with the gun in question and the cartridge cases.

Other unintentional shots

An investigation by Los Angeles Times questions safety on the set of Rust, a low budget movie by Hollywood standards. According to the newspaper, six members of the film’s technical team had left the set several hours before the tragedy to protest against their working conditions.

Above all, the weapon involved in the drama had been fired by mistake at least three times before, the newspaper added, which quotes members of the filming on condition of anonymity. Saturday, October 15, one of Alec Baldwin’s lineups would have accidentally fired with a weapon presented as “cold”. According to the source of Los Angeles Times, the incident was reportedly not investigated.

Asked about this by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the production company had not reacted on Friday afternoon. “The whole team is totally devastated by today’s tragedy and we send our sincere condolences to Halyna’s family and loved ones”, had earlier said a spokesperson for the production in a statement.

The International Alliance of Performing Jobs (IATSE) also refused to comment to AFP on other information relayed by the American press according to which the props branch of the union had circulated an e-mail claiming that a “Real bullet was accidentally fired” and that none of its members were at the scene of the shooting during the drama. “Establishing a culture of safety requires constant vigilance and vigilance from each of us, every day”, simply said the union.

The authorities in charge of cinema in New Mexico did not wish to react either, stressing in a statement that “The safety and well-being of all actors, crews and filmmakers in New Mexico (were) always a priority”.

“Stupor and sadness”

“Words fail me to express my amazement and my sadness after the tragic accident which killed Halyna Hutchins”, for his part, Alec Baldwin tweeted on Friday. “I fully cooperate with the police investigation as to how this tragedy could have taken place”, adds the actor.

The Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department said he spontaneously introduced himself to them, answering their questions before leaving the scene. He was not arrested.

Alec Baldwin, 63, has made himself particularly popular in the United States in recent years for his impersonations of Donald Trump on the famous satirical show « Saturday Night Live ».

The shooting victim, Halyna Hutchins, was unanimously hailed by her colleagues as a talented and passionate filmmaker who quickly made a name for herself among the ranks of cinematographers in Hollywood.

Originally from Ukraine, she grew up on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle “Surrounded by reindeer and nuclear submarines”, according to its website.

After her studies, she worked as a journalist in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, before joining the prestigious Conservatory of the American Film Academy (AFI) in Los Angeles in 2015. “Words are not enough to express the loss of someone so dear to AFI members”, reacted the film school.

As is profoundly true in the art of cinematography, words alone cannot capture the loss of one so dear to the AFI c? https://t.co/vU6iHpZM4Q

? AFIConservatory (@AFI Conservatory)

Recently, Halyna Hutchins had worked on a detective film, Blindfire, and on Archenemy, fantasy film produced by Elijah Wood. Rust, a western, was his first starring production.

The World with AFP

Halyna Hutchins, 42, was evacuated by helicopter on Thursday to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead by medics. Director Joel Souza, 48, was able to leave the hospital after a few hours.

Read also Actor Alec Baldwin who shot deadly on the set of a western

Other unintentional shots

“Stupor and sadness”

The Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department said he spontaneously introduced himself to them, answering their questions before leaving the scene. He was not arrested.

Alec Baldwin, 63, has made himself particularly popular in the United States in recent years for his impersonations of Donald Trump on the famous satirical show « Saturday Night Live ».

Originally from Ukraine, she grew up on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle “Surrounded by reindeer and nuclear submarines”, according to its website.

As is profoundly true in the art of cinematography, words alone cannot capture the loss of one so dear to the AFI c? https://t.co/vU6iHpZM4Q

? AFIConservatory (@AFI Conservatory)

Recently, Halyna Hutchins had worked on a detective film, Blindfire, and on Archenemy, fantasy film produced by Elijah Wood. Rust, a western, was his first starring production.

The World with AFP

MORNING LIST

This weekend, we invite you to discover two portraits: one, heartbreaking, of the Israeli writer Amos Oz; the other, fascinating, of the communist militant and resistant Martha Desrumaux. Also on the program, an edifying documentary on the flaws in waste recycling, but also a little piece of Chinese history with chopsticks in hand.

The big lies of waste recycling

While the European Union set itself the goal of recycling 50% of its waste in 2008, France is stagnant at 42.9%. Journalist Paul Labrosse investigated ?Forbidden Zone? with industry players. He brings back an edifying documentary, which reveals fraudulent practices at all levels. Starting with this garbage collector from 18^e arrondissement of Paris which, with his colleagues, loads green and yellow bins indiscriminately into the same dumpster, while assuring the journalist who approaches him that the yellow bin he is holding with one hand … is not yellow!

We can also cite the Jas de Rhôdes landfill (Bouches-du-Rhône), managed by the Suez company, north of Marseille, where recyclable materials (cardboard, wood, plastics, etc.) and hazardous products (tires, gas , bumpers) are present – which is prohibited. Or the packaging processing center in Lorient (Morbihan), where a former executive manager of a private sorting center anonymously delivers the essentials: the sector’s lack of profitability leads to sending directly to landfill or to incineration two or even three trucks out of ten, in order to free up a minimum margin. This explains why, in France, on average 70% of plastics would never be recycled. Catherine pacary

?Waste: the great lies of recycling?, documentary by Paul Labrosse (France, 2021, 128 min). Available on 6Play.fr.

Amos Oz, a dotted portrait

Israeli writer Amos Oz, who died in 2018, describes in this documentary the deep wound caused by the break-up with his youngest daughter.

Heartbreaking. So one would be tempted to qualify the documentary that Yair Qedar devoted to the Israeli writer Amos Oz, who died in 2018. But is it correct to speak of a documentary? It is rather a portrait, full of holes and faults – sometimes abysmal – even if the angry questions are addressed.

It all starts with his voice, from what we imagine to be the window of his apartment in Tel Aviv where he had come to live late, after years spent in his beautiful house in the Negev desert. Hence her voice, undoubtedly tired from sickness and pain, but precise and eager to say things. He converses with his friend and biographer Nurith Gertz. Talks about literature – he can’t get over having written so much (short stories, novels, essays?). But also the deep wound caused by the break with his youngest daughter, Galia, who, in a book published a year after the death of her father and not translated into French, accuses him of having mistreated her.

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MORNING LIST

The big lies of waste recycling

?Waste: the great lies of recycling?, documentary by Paul Labrosse (France, 2021, 128 min). Available on 6Play.fr.

Amos Oz, a dotted portrait

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On November 9, twenty-six historical pieces from the kingdom of Abomey, from the collections of the Quai Branly Museum, must be transferred to Benin, where they originated: statues, palace doors, thrones, altars? A temporary presentation is planned after the return, probably in Cotonou, while waiting for the planned place in the city of Abomey, in the south of the country, to be ready to receive them. The history of these royal objects takes place in two stages, separated by more than a century.

The first moment is that of the colonial conquest. In the 1880s, the III^e French Republic put increasing pressure on the Fon kingdom of Abomey, which was then ruled by King Glélé, to annex it. Glélé died in 1889; He was succeeded by his son Béhanzin, who refused as much as his father to give in to France. The war began in 1890 with the battle of Cotonou.

The resistance of the female and male troops of Béhanzin is such that the dispatch of an expeditionary force formed for the occasion is decided, in March 1892. Commanded by Colonel Alfred-Amédée Dodds (1842-1922), himself born in a mixed-race family from Saint-Louis of Senegal, the column, armed with Lebel rifles – the latest in the genre, at that date – and supported by artillery, broke the successive lines of defense of the Fon and S troops seized Abomey, the capital, on November 17, 1892. Dodds had already been promoted general a few days earlier for his “victory”.

It was then, during the sacking of the royal palaces, that the three statues were taken goiter, which are the emblems of the last three kings, Ghézo, Glélé and Béhanzin, and are supposed to protect, as well as furniture and court objects. Dodds donated it to the Musée du Trocadéro, in Paris, in two installments: eight pieces in 1893, eighteen in 1895.

Meanwhile, on January 25, 1894, Behanzin, who continued an armed resistance, was drawn into a trap. Dodds offers him a meeting, supposedly to negotiate. In reality, he captured him and had him exiled to Martinique, where he remained captive until March 1906. Finally authorized to leave the island, he died in Algiers on the following December 10, without having seen his country again.

Two episodes

These are the two Dodds donations that are returned. The main lot is that of 1893: the three half-man, half-animal statues, four palace doors decorated with polychrome bas-reliefs and a royal seat abundantly decorated with figures. The 1895 lot includes three recades – insignia of authority attributed to dignitaries -, six portable altars taken from the royal palace (including three incomplete), engraved calabashes, the thrones of kings Ghézo and Glélé, a footrest, a spindle, a loom and, finally, a soldier’s tunic and pants. From the Trocadéro, the ensemble joined the quai Branly collections in 2003.

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Two episodes

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Griffon Café, of course! Jean-Yves Ferri may have never set foot in this bar-restaurant at 4^e arrondissement of Paris, it was there, a born entertainer, that he made an appointment to talk about the aptly named Asterix and the Griffin (Albert-René / Hachette, 44 pages, 9.99 euros), the new album of the adventures of the famous Gaul.

No eagle-headed lion, however, hangs on the wall. But a whole bric-a-brac of zebra in fake, Gainsbourg in plaster and period vinyls – the archetype, in short, of the bobo bistro, leagues from the rural South-West dear to the scriptwriter, native Tarnais and Ariégeois of residence. In the absence of ale, go for two glasses of Pineau des Charentes, even if there is no question of Angoulême and its comic book festival during the aperitif.

Art of nonsense

If the Gauls feared that the sky would fall on their heads, it was Asterix, born the same year as him (1959), who somehow “fell”, without warning, on Jean-Yves Ferri’s bald head. . Before participating, in 2010, in a sort of scriptwriters’ competition organized on the sly by Hachette, he was already living comfortably from comics.

Written for Manu Larcenet, the series Return to Earth (Dargaud) had earned him the recognition of a large audience. A hilarious album drawn by his hand, De Gaulle at the beach (Dargaud, 2007), featuring the General during his paid vacation, had devoted his art of nonsense and quirky humor, in the tradition of his first hero, Aimé Lacapelle, a policeman driving a tractor.

Read also Asterix: authors chosen in the greatest secrecy

Fascinating trajectory that his when we think that it is to put “Sheltered from the outside world” that he had decided, as a child, to embrace the career of a designer. “When you’re young and start drawing, you know you’re not risking anything, confides the former student of the Beaux-Arts in Toulouse. We gain access to worlds from which we do not suffer the consequences or the constraints. “ Asterix is ??quite the opposite: maximum media exposure, commercial pressure from the same barrel, a culture of industrial secrecy which requires authors to share documents on an encrypted server. Not to mention the inherent risk of taking the “big head”: ?If all of this had happened to me when I was 20, I would have definitely been puffed up by the stuff. I would have taken myself for ?Mr. Asterix ?, which I am not, any more than I am René Goscinny. “

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Art of nonsense

Read also Asterix: authors chosen in the greatest secrecy

You have 56.96% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.