Inspired by the life of the eponymous Martinican writer and activist, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s feature debut, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, is a sumptuous, critical reflection on art, love, and politics — employing the spells of cinema to contend with an elusive legacy.
Following a number of captivating shorts that have variously explored questions of history, the creative process, and the inner worlds of Black women, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire is the sumptuous, beguiling feature debut from American artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich.
Born in Martinique, Suzanne Césaire was an anti-colonialist activist and writer who contributed — alongside her husband Aimé Césaire — to the Négritude movement, and whose limited but forceful writings resonate to the present day. Less biopic than critical deconstruction and inviting reverie, Hunt-Ehrlich’s evocations of the words and life of Suzanne Césaire provoke rich and fragmentary reflections on art, love, politics, and even the nature of filmmaking.
As a group of actors gather to embody the roles of Suzanne (Zita Hanrot), Aimé (Motell Foster), and their famed Surrealist friend André Breton (Josué Gutierrez) who was inspired by her work, vintage-tinged staged sequences bleed into reflexive considerations about the essence of Suzanne’s writing, her reputation, her desires, and her intersectional identity. That there are several interpretations of Suzanne is indicative of her prismatic and elusive legacy.
Shot on lush 16mm, with equally hypnotic sound and music, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire is part of a multifaceted project that has been presented in gallery contexts — including, most recently, the 2024 Whitney Biennial — offering at once a tropical romance, a political treatise, a work of literary analysis and recuperation, and a manifesto.
ANDRÉA PICARD
Content advisory: sexual content, drug use
Screenings
Scotiabank 8
TIFF Lightbox 4
Scotiabank 7