Je Suis Noires | Screening + Artist Talk with Rachel M'Bon and Igiaba Scego

The presentation of JE SUIS NOIRES  in Rome is the occasion for a conversation between Rachel M’Bon and Igiaba Scego moderated by Sonia Lima Morais, and for a collective reflection on and interweaving of personal, biographical experiences, the examination of structural conditions, the questioning of institutions and institutional work, and the potential of inter-European collectivity. The Swiss-Congolese journalist and filmmaker Rachel M’Bon lived in Rome for a while in the 1990s and remembers a city in which Black people and especially Black women had hardly any visibility or voices—in public spaces, in institutions, in the self-imagination of a country with a covered-up colonial past. In the meantime, Rachel M’Bon has, among other things, set up the Centre Culturel Afropea in Switzerland, a nomadic organisation that also uses subversive tactics to create institutional visibility for people of the African diaspora, thus also addressing Switzerland’s colonial entanglements (a country that likes to imagine itself without a colonial past). In present-day Rome, for example, it is the equally nomadic SPAZIO GRIOT that makes a crucial contribution to the visibility and negotiation of Blackness and Otherness and the visibility of racialised and marginalised subjectivities. The examination of structural conditions, such as language, the invisibilization of certain bodies, and the marginalization of specific epistemologies by the institutions, is just as much a common concern for M’Bon, Scego and Morais, as is the recognition of the potential of international solidarity, connection, exchange, and collectivity.

Synopsis

June 2020. Thousands of white and Black Swiss citizens take to the streets in Geneva, Zurich, and Lausanne to denounce racial discrimination. It was the first time that the stories of visible minorities came to light. Black women played a leading role, denouncing systemic racism and challenging the stereotype of humanitarian Switzerland as an island of peace and prosperity. In a country that has made irreproachability its dogma, it is difficult to confront its darker side, to reveal its ties to colonialism. It is hard to make people understand that the legacy of this colonial past still fuels the racist nuances deeply rooted in the collective unconscious. With director Juliana Fanjul, narrator and protagonist Rachel M’Bon questions her country, women on the street, a historian, a political ally, a collective, and “opens” a door to six protagonists. Each of them has a journey that echoes her path to emancipation.

H18:30 – Screening of JE SUIS NOIRES, Rachel M’Bon & Juliana Fanjul
2022, 50 minutes
Original language, Italian subtitles

H19:30 – Talk with Rachel M’Bon, director and Igiaba Scego, author and journalist
Moderated by Sonia Lima Morais, writer and performer
(The talk will be held in English)

Istituto Svizzero
Via Liguria 20, Rome
Free entry until full capacity. Register here. 

Rachel M’Bon, born in Switzerland to a Congolese father and a Swiss mother, is a journalist and film-maker. After a federal diploma in communications and studies in journalism, she worked for over 15 years, for several Swiss media groups in the society and culture section. In 2018, she launched the Instagram account NOIRES to highlight black and brown women in Switzerland, which would later become the account of her association NWAR (Now we are Rising). Her first film, “Je suis noires”, co-directed with Juliana Fanjul, premiered at the Geneva International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) in March 2022, exploring themes of identity and the issue of racism. Its success earned it the Swiss Film Prize in March 2023. Rachel is a strong advocate of diversity and inclusion, founding NWAR and the Afropea Cultural Center in 2023. In September 2023, she was named one of the 100 personalities of the year by the Swiss newspaper Le Temps, and continues to work on filming and writing new stories about black representation.

Juliana Fanjul is a Mexican-born director based in Geneva. She graduated from the International Film School of Cuba and the HES-SO Master’s program in Switzerland. Her films explore power dynamics in the female world and have been screened and awarded globally. She is the head of the documentary department at the Film School of Cuba and teaches at EPFL and HEAD (Geneva).

Igiaba Scego is a Somali Italian writer, cultural activist, and freelance scholar. She was born in Rome to Somali parents who took refuge in Italy following a coup d’état in their native country, where her father served as foreign minister. She holds a PhD in education on postcolonial subjects, has done extensive academic work in Italy and around the world, and has a special interest in immigration and mobility. Her first memoir won Italy’s prestigious Mondello Prize, and her novel The Color Line won the Premio Napoli. Scego received the International Award Viareggio-Répaci in 2021. Most recently, she was longlisted for Premio Strega for her second memoir Cassandra a Mogadiscio. Her previous novels include Beyond Babylon and Adua. She also coedited the anthology series Africana (Feltrinelli) with Chiara Piaggio.