When the movie “Fanon” by French director Jean -Claude Barney was presented in French lounges in late April, his presence was limited to a limited number of cinemas, while the majority of the lounges, especially the series of MK2 cinema halls (MK2), which is one of the most prominent and most widespread networks in France.
This absence sparked a discussion on social media and in meetings and programs that dealt with the film, and some criticized the selective policies and censorship of these halls, while others saw that the matter does not exceed the limits of regular software choices or returns to what they considered weak in the film’s artistic structure.
Franz Fanon, French Martinist psychiatrist and one of the most prominent persons of colonialism, was never an icon that is easy to absorb in French space. Neither is a personality that can put her image on a poster and sell it to cinema lovers, nor his idea of what can be digested without a clash.
While Barney’s movie on Fanon was far from commercial logic, Fanon’s hostility in France did not start today. In 2019, when the Bordeaux Municipal Council proposed its name to a street in Jenko, a storm broke out of the objection that ended in the freezing of the decision, and this was accompanied by a protest message describing Fanon’s thought as a “justification for terrorism”, and warned that his followers “will become a cold blood killers.”
The vigil used Fanon’s lyrics herself to condemn him, citing his famous sentence, “For the colonizer, life can only be born from the body of the decomposing colonizer”, and considered his book “Antolpishing of the Earth” – which he accomplished in his last days as he struggled with leukemia (leukemia) and published before his departure – a very dangerous text.
France has fought the book since its release in 1961 by the Maspero House in Paris, at the height of the Algerian revolution, until its acquisition was a sufficient reason for arrest, but the ban was only increased by spreading, turning into a global statement of national liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and acquired the “forbidden” text that must be read.
Barney returns in his movie to that same era, when Fanon wrote his book while working at the Blida Guanfelle Hospital (whose name is today) on the outskirts of the Algerian capital, where he managed the Department of Psychiatry 3 years in the mid -fifties.
From this experience, the film weaves his speech, a reader of the book, with a voice equivalent to the image, in a work that was accomplished with a modest budget, but he finds on the centenary of the birth of Fanon (1925-1961) an opportunity to re-ask his questions in front of a new audience.
“I have always wanted, in my deep, that I would accomplish a movie where Fanon is present with an influential presence, I did not know any form that I would give it, will it be an explicit axis or a strong presence in the margin? But, in most of my previous works, I was preparing to meet Fanon and write it indirectly.”
“I have always wanted, deep in my depth, to accomplish a movie in which Fanon is present with an influential presence. I did not know any form I would give it: Will it be an explicit axis or a strong presence in the margin?
Director Jean Claude Barney
This is not the first time that the owner of the “dyed colonial” on the screen, whether as a character or through his books that remained an inspiration and controversy, was the beginning in 1968 with the Italian director Valentino Arousini and his movie “tormented the land”, which today is a prominent example of the convergence of European “intervention cinema” with the struggles of the countries of the South in the 1960s.
Then the documentary “Black skin, a white mask” (1996) came by Isaac Julian and Mark Nash, to highlight the life of Fanon and his psychological writings that were negligent. In 2014, Swedish Gourane Olson presented his documentary “on violence”, in an attempt to link Fanon’s thought with African liberation movements in the 1970s, and the documentary is inspired by the title of Fanon’s book “Black Skin … White Masks”.
As for the Algerian director Abdel Nour Zahiah, he devoted more than one work to Fanon, among them “Franz Fanon Memory Mennas” (in 2002), and his latest movie “real facts that occurred in the last century at the Psychiatry Hospital in Blida” (2024). Besides these works, there are many other cinematic attempts that are difficult to limit here.
And on the presentation of another movie about Fanon, Jean -Claude Barney – to Al Jazeera Net – referring to the film Zahiah, says, “It is a strong and a sign for two films about Fanon in its centenary, and from two different perspectives about the era itself, I think that our film completes each other, and they will succeed in touching different fans, and it is important for the audience to see that we all differ even when we deal with the same topic, Multiple cinematic suggestions. “
Since the sixties of the last century, the left -wing cinematographers and the seventh arts looked at Fanon as a spiritual father of the “Third World” cinema, especially in the context of the debate about “the aesthetics of liberation”. To him, the cinematic space is a site to subjugate the scenes to a sterile shelling of pictures, looks and ideologies that confuse and disturb the black black identity.
Psychiatry from the treatment room to the revolution
But why is Fanon in particular? We ask Barney, the son of the Antilles (the Caribia of France), and replies, “I have always wanted, in my deep, to make a movie in which Vanon is present with an influential presence, I did not know which form I will give it: Will it be an explicit axis or a strong presence in the margin? Historical, but a humanitarian necessity and an organic experience in my personal path, I tried to narrate the sincerity of my experience and my culture, and what his readings have left in me since I was in the 16th.
Barne’s film follows Fanon’s work in Blida Hospital, where the director touches the relationship of the Martinic doctor with the Algerian revolutionaries, and Fanon (Alexander Bouer) appears by linking Hussein (Mahdi Senussi), the Algerian worker in the hospital, who leads him to the revolution through the local leader Ramadan (Salem Kali). Nevertheless, Barney does not declare that Fanon was a member of the National Liberation Front, then Fanon was sheltering the revolutionaries in the hospital and giving them medical care, and even when the French expelled him from Algeria to Tunisia, he was identifying himself as an Algerian.
In Blida, Fanon is no longer able to separate medicine and politics, between the patient and the colonizer, and there he wrote his famous phrase, “colonialism is a disease that affects consciousness”, and Barne presents this transformation away from simplification and glorification, so he has not a complete icon, but rather a person who reproduces the contradictions whenever he is deeper in the Algerian experience.
There are scenes that suggest that his commitment to revolutionary violence was not free from hesitation, for example, we see him in front of the mirror trying to write a sentence about freedom, then it stops suddenly, as if the words betrayed him, and Barney commented, “I did not want to be a sure thing from everything, I wanted him in confused and sometimes unable to express, because the truth is that the genius is not always clear, but a conflict with Mystery.
In the film, Fanon’s thought and writing with his life are discussed: the doctor, the patient, the lecturer, and the immersed in the revolution, and in such a context, Barne had to select, to emerge aside and exclude another, and he explains, “When you make a fictional film about a very complex intellectual figure like Fanon, you have to make strict choices, so I excluded everything that does not serve my basic. With his idea, and to show its effect on my path, and for this the film came with a clear personal nature.
Fanon our contemporary: Gaza in the mirror
The film cannot be seen away from the broader context that is returning Fanon today to the interface of discussion, not only as a historical figure, but as a present voice in the face of the Palestinian tragedy. At the time of Gaza, his questions are regained about colonialism, violence and liberation, as if they are still on the passage of more than half a century, and there are those who object to the comparisons and say that Israel is not France, and Gaza is not Algeria, and that 2025 is not 1962. However, his words are due to circulation, “colonialism can only erase violence.”
The question of Fanon’s connection with the betting remains complex. There are those who fear that it will be called as an isolated symbol from its context, away from the Martinique or the Algerian war that has formed its thought, and its restoration in this way may mean repeating it more than it means rethinking it.
But after a century for his birth, Fanon is still an open and disturbing text, and his writings are read in demonstrations, articles and classrooms, not as an effect but rather a living tool for framing the Gaza catastrophe, and what makes his presence continuous is not his prefabricated recipes but the strength of his diagnosis.
“We need Fanon because he clearly diagnosed the subject of the defect, and showed how the system of control and the systematic abolition of the entire peoples threatens the humanity of the person himself, his words may seem closer to abstraction, but what is going on in the world, especially in Palestine, re -reminds us of their proof, his testimony did not obtain the spread it deserve Psychological balance and human self -building in a world in which the simplest moral laws are violated, and here the strength of its thought lies that there is still a corner stone in building psychology that resists colonial alienation.
Here lies the weight of the film as well, as it does not provide Fanon as a ready answer, but rather as an open framework for questions. “I didn’t want to present a lesson in history, but rather to open a window from which the present sneaks,” says Barney.
He adds, “We need Fanon because he clearly diagnosed the subject of the defect, and showed how the system of control and systematic abolition of the entire peoples threatens the humanity of man himself, and his words may seem closer to abstraction, but what is going on in the world, especially in Palestine, re -reminds us of its proof. Psychological balance and human self -building in a world in which the simplest moral laws are violated, and here the strength of its thought lies that there is still a corner stone in building psychology that resists colonial alienation.
Cinema, racism and colonial legacies
Barney (1965) comes from the Antille Islands, from a history that describes him as “heavier in the wounds of Al -Aboudi”, and continues “We have to establish a work that faces forgetfulness, away from the dependence of France, which did not recognize our Afocryan culture one day, I am very sensitive to my roots, and it is a compass that I do not deviate from, I believe in humanity, but I cannot forgive those who destroy and laugh and sacrifice and sacrifice In complete peoples, this is in my view a crime without discussion, all of this I tried to embody it in the movie. “
“We have to establish a work that faces forgetfulness, away from the dependence of France, which has never recognized our Afro -Urban culture. I am very sensitive to my roots, and it is a compass that I do not deviate from.
The biggest obstacles that faced the film’s makers were the issue of financing, and finding a ready -made entity to support a film that is not traditional about Fanon, and Barney commented, “We were able to provide a budget that allows the completion of the work in dignity, it is true that some parties tried to marginalize us, but I was aware of the scarcity of works that open the horizon of thinking and feeling, I wanted to make a contemporary and visual and interactive movie, Amazing and asking questions, in a manner consistent with what Fanon called for: building a new person. “
This challenge reveals – in part of it – a broader question about the influence of structural racism and colonial legacies in the world of cinema today, whether in the completion of films, in financing or showing them and then receiving them, and Barney answers “undoubted This field, not to leave the square empty. “
Barney concludes, “Since my beginnings, I was placed in the second -class director, this is a clear discrimination, but it was also a motivation to do the best every time, today there is a new generation that is completely liberated, making his works without waiting for anyone, and here the real confrontation begins. I am very happy because it has proven that the need for Fanon is still urgent, and that we were able to present his thought in a way that touches the present and opens the horizon of the future. “
(Tagstotranslate) Culture