Two Films by Julius-Amédée Laou: THE OLD SORCERESS AND THE VALET (1987) and OPEN-MIC SOLITAIRE (1983)

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Two Films by Julius-Amédée Laou: THE OLD SORCERESS AND THE VALET (1987) and OPEN-MIC SOLITAIRE (1983)

(Julius-Amédée Laou, 1983/1987, digital, 106 min total)

RSVP

The films of French-Martinican filmmaker and playwright Julius-Amédée Laou boldly enact darkly ironic dramas of diasporic identity and conflict in the boulevards of Paris. With a keen, Fanonian sense of colonialism’s psychic toll, Laou exposes the political and personal frustrations of France’s Black inhabitants. In the landmark short film OPEN-MIC SOLITAIRE, a young artist, outraged over his brother’s murder by a gang of skinheads, takes over a radio station, broadcasting a message of desperation and grief that only a few are ready to hear. In the lustrously filmed, mordantly written comedy THE OLD SORCERESS AND THE VALET, an aging Martinican couple stroll aimlessly—reminiscing, quarreling, and bearing witness to lives spent in the thankless service of white patrons, Finally available in restored and subtitled form, these two films are testaments to the incisive, idiosyncratic genius of their polymath director, and some of 2023’s most exciting cinematic revivals. 

Presented in partnership with the Film Studies Center at University of Chicago, who will screen Laou’s films MIST MELODIES IN PARIS (1985) and FRENCH WEDDING, CARIBBEAN STYLE (2003) on February 16.

With thanks to Steve Macfarlane.

Images of Julius-Amédée Laou

Contact The Block Museum of Art for more information: (847) 491-4000 or email us at block-museum@northwestern.edu