“What's interesting is to bring him back into the world of the living and not into the world of a posthumous icon”
- The director and star talk about how they crafted their portrayal of Martiniquan intellectual Frantz Fanon on screen, and how they connected with others who identify with his story
Jean-Claude Barny (left) and Alexandre Bouyer (© HakounArt/FIFM24)
Tackling the bold, revolutionary life – in more ways than one – of writer, intellectual, psychiatrist and anti-colonial activist Frantz Fanon are director Jean-Claude Barny and star Alexandre Bouyer, who plays the eponymous figure in Barny’s newest effort, Fanon[+see also:
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filmprofile]. Cineuropa sat down with them both at the 21st Marrakech Film Festival to discuss the movie, which had its world premiere in the Special Screenings strand. During the conversation, Barny also proudly shared US filmmaker Ava Duvernay's written personal response to him about the film, which she praised as having “captured his spirit, his complexities and the unwavering fire that shaped his journey”.
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Cineuropa: I learned that audiovisual material of Frantz Fanon is quite limited. Without a lot of references, how did you cultivate the character in writing and also in performance?
Jean-Claude Barny: For me, Fanon was the one who allowed me to have a different vision of how I could integrate characters of African descent into cinema in general, and to build characters that were totally sincere, authentic and devoid of any servitude toward the industry. We were under the impression that we were making someone who had a strong sense of humanity and who was recognisable as someone with a kind of authentic sincerity. He’s a character who was out of the ordinary and above the ordinary. But we can't turn him into an untouchable icon, an icon without reality. What's interesting for us is to bring him back into the world of the living and not into the world of a posthumous icon. We first had to make him tangible, to make him real. We had to construct and deconstruct. We had to build a human being, and this human being has an extraordinary destiny.
Alexandre Bouyer: The first job for me was to read all of his books. I had to create everything – like the way he speaks, the way he moves, the way his face moves, the way he talks, the way he walks. I used three pictures I saw of him on the internet because there was no video or audio of him that I could find. Actually, I found one piece of audio, but I didn’t want to copy his voice. I really wanted to create and bring something of me to this character. After that, I had the physical aspect. I lost like 12 kilos for the role in one month. I was sleeping and thinking about Fanon, eating and thinking about Fanon, walking and thinking about Fanon. When we started shooting, I asked the team not to call me Alexandre, but just to call me Frantz or Fanon for two weeks so I could make sure I would stay in character.
What did your working style look like?
AB: I was very comfortable thanks to Jean-Claude, and he trusted me to do whatever I wanted to do. You have to understand that he worked so hard for this movie. He’d wanted to make this movie for ten years. He couldn’t let anybody touch his work, and I understand why. He wants people to understand what he wanted to do; he wants people to understand who Fanon was. I’m the first one he could trust for this movie. He knew I worked hard, and that for me was everything.
JCB: It’s true. I make cinema that’s very personal to me, and until I met Alexandre, I’d always tried to control everything. Alexandre was the first person I gave responsibility to. I gave him the responsibility to take the film where he thought he could take it. I told him, “Now it’s up to you to carry Fanon on your shoulders.” He’s the only one who could bring people together, and make people adhere to Frantz’s thesis and principles. That's why I left him alone with Fanon.
You open the movie with a very distinct scene where a young Fanon gets viciously bitten by a crab. Could you explain a bit more about this?
JCB: It’s a way to explain to viewers that we're going to offer them a project in which there's a universe that's completely “different”. If you propose a first image that takes place in a city like New York City, a megalopolis, it’s comfortable because we know that environment. But if you send the viewer to a first image where it's an event he doesn't know about, he's going to say, “I have to pay attention to everything I see.”
Were there any moments from shooting that were particularly special?
AB: For me, it’s a scene where Fanon has to make this speech, a very beautiful speech that I really enjoyed doing – he’s talking to some students at a school. I was really into the character at that moment. I don’t remember everything I did. When I was done with the speech, everything felt very real, and Jean-Claude could have stopped shooting, but we just let the camera [roll]. I started doing other things in this speech, another speech. And he was like, “Okay, do whatever you want to do with it. I really like it." I remember at the end of the speech, people were clapping. I felt like I was overcome by the spirit of Fanon at that moment.
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