Anthology Film Archives

Film Screenings / Programs / Series

DIASPORIC VOICES OF THE GRIOTS THEATER COMPANY

June 11 – June 15

June 11-15, 2025

The Griots Theater Company (Les Griots), founded in 1953, played a pivotal role in the development of African and Caribbean actors in France, and was among the most important postwar expressions of Black performing arts culture in Europe. According to Sylvie Chalaye, as outlined in her article in the February 2013 issue of Africulture, the creation of the troupe was largely driven by Robert Liensol, a Guadeloupean actor who initially came to Paris to study literature. Liensol, whose stage name was Omer Sollèn, attended the Sorbonne, where he met Toto Bissainthe, Sarah Maldoror, Samba Ababakar, and Timité Bassori – individuals who would later become renowned actors, actresses, and filmmakers. They joined forces to stage Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Huis Clos”, and their performance at the Concours National du Théâtre Universitaire in 1956 won them second prize. This success led to the formal creation of their company, and in 1957, Robert Liensol officially joined the troupe as its director.

The Griots Theater Company grew rapidly, attracting actors and actresses from across Africa, the African diaspora, and the French Afro-Caribbean community. Some notable figures associated with the troupe included Guadeloupean actor Théo Légitimus; Franck Valmont, a renowned Guadeloupean singer and musician, and co-creator of the soundtrack for Med Hondo’s WEST INDIES (one of several Hondo films that would feature Liensol); and Senegalese actors Douta Seck and Bachir Touré.

The goal of the film program, “Diasporic Voices of the Griots Theater Company”, is to highlight a group of Afro-Caribbean and African artists based in Paris, with Robert Liensol as a central figure, and to address the marginalization of African and Afro-Caribbean actors in the cinema and theater industry, where, as filmmaker Med Hondo put it, “Africans were largely absent from the cast, ignored, and excluded from the stage” (Med Hondo: Un cinéaste rebelle, Ibrahima Signaté, 1995).

The series also serves to highlight the socio-political interests reflected in the films in which these artists participated, in relation to their condition as actors and actresses from the diaspora. AMOK, by Moroccan filmmaker Souheil Ben Barka, explores the harrowing journey of a teacher in 1980s apartheid South Africa. THE OLD SORCERESS AND THE VALET, by French-Martinican filmmaker Julius-Amédée Laou, depicts an elderly couple from the French Caribbean who arrived in Paris in 1921, their daily lives marked by suppressed desires and heavy silences. VOODOO DANCE: A TRIBUTE TO THE PEOPLE OF HAITI, a documentary by Haitian filmmaker and artist Elsie Haas, explores the significant role of Voodoo in Haitian culture from various perspectives. VOODOO DANCE features the music of the great Haitian singer and actress Toto Bissainthe, and the screening will be preceded by a portrait of Bissainthe by Guadeloupean filmmaker Sarah Maldoror. Finally, THE GREEN PASTURES, by French radio and television director Jean-Christophe Averty, which reenacts the gospel and the Old Testament, extends the diasporic perspective to encompass the experience of African-American culture, as seen through the eyes of actors and actresses from the diaspora in France.

“Diasporic Voices of the Griots Theater Company” is guest-programmed by Annabelle Aventurin, who also wrote the introduction above. The series is presented with invaluable support from Villa Albertine.

Special thanks to Vincent Florant & Sandrine Neveux (Villa Albertine); Souheil Ben Barka; Dies Blau (INA); Annouchka de Andrade; Guillaume Launay (Talitha); and Roselly Torres & Shu Wang (Third World Newsreel).

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