Colonialism from the Left Bank’s point of view. Négritude, national culture and humanistic vision in Statues Also Die by Alain Resnais and Chris Marker

Abstract

Les Statues meurent aussi (Statues Also Die), a short documentary film by Alain Resnais and Chris Marker realised between 1950 and 1953, is – apart from the films by Jean Rouch – the only example of modern French cinema in the fifties which deals with the problem of French colonialism. More precisely: with the destruction of African art and culture as a result of French colonialism. Statues Also Die never received much attention, neither by the time of release nor afterwards: prohibited on the basis of »anti-colonial tendencies« after the first public screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 1953, the documentary hit the screens only in 1968 – at a time, when it seemed already outdated in form and content. Given that Statues Also Die is a con- temporary of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks as well as of the debate about Négritude carried on by the writers and intellectuals of the Left Bank, this short documentary film is up for re-evaluation: especially so, if one considers the unique position the film takes on the coincidence of decolonisation and class conflict which dominated the anti-colonial discourse of the left at that time.