LA PERMISSION (FR 1967. D: Melvin van Peebles)

Lecture & Film “Black Atlantic Cinema”

Lecture: Greg de Cuir Jr

Lecture: A Black American in Paris
Melvin van Peebles left the United States to live and work in Europe in 1959, and was invited to Paris for screenings on the strength of the short films he had made a few years earlier. After finding success as a journalist and novelist he would go on to direct his debut feature film La Permission in 1967 – in French – making him a pioneer of not only independent but also international Black cinema. This talk will explore van Peebles’ film work as something of a missing link in the history of French cinema, also a fascinating outlier in the history of Black cinema, and for its subversive depiction of the modern forms of “double consciousness” that Black men must negotiate both at home and abroad.
Greg de Cuir Jr is co-founder + artistic director of Kinopravda Institute in Belgrade. In 2024 he organized programs for the Whitney Biennial in New York and was visiting lecturer at Universität Basel.

Further information and program: Here…

Organizer
Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies at Goethe University and Kino im deutschen Filmmuseum in cooperation with the research center “Normative Orders”, the research cluster “ConTrust – Trust in Conflict” and the Hessian Film and Media Academy; realized with funds from the Adickes Fund of Goethe University