1During the Obama years, the issue of race seemed to dissolve into the so-called “post-racial” era in the media. For critics such as H. Roy Kaplan in The Myth of Post-Racial America Searching for Equality in the Age of Materialism 2011 and David J. Leonard and Lisa A. Guerrero in African Americans on Television Race-ing for Ratings 2013, however, such colorblindness led to the bypassing of any direct confrontation with the persistent problems linked to race in contemporary American society. 2In his critically acclaimed 2013 cinematic release 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen circumvents the “great white narrative” by addressing race “head-on” instead of metaphorically, writing every character within their own racial background. As in Solomon Northup’s 1853 Twelve Years a Slave, black characters are not removed from their own histories; instead, they are shaped and defined by them. To what extent, then, does the film distinctly voice racial concerns and tensions and provide representational spaces on screen in a nuanced and reflective manner? How does it—if indeed it does—subvert the characteristic black slave/character and white master/hero dynamic and embrace a wide variety of black stories and perspectives? By reconsidering the classic biopic/historical film, I will examine how the movie relocates America’s problems with race at the very heart of the national debate and offers a “post-post-racial” screen model that directly confronts race history. 3In The Black Image in the White Mind Media and Race in America, Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki suggest there is a new goal or end for media operations in the realm of race encouraging audiences and media producers alike to become more critically self-aware as they deal with the culture’s racial signals. Such activity would serve not only the social interest in racial comity, but the media’s long-term economic interests as well. And it would set the stage for an eventual cessation—an end in the other sense—to color consciousness, for arrival at the time, however far off, when “race” no longer holds meaning for media producers and their audiences. Building on Benedict Anderson’s work on “imagined communities,” they insist that “[t]oday, the same processes operate common identification is shaped by mediated images of who constitutes one’s own people and nation” Entman and Rojecki 205. 4To what extent does 12 Years a Slave rebuild and extend this imagined community by inscribing the experience of slavery on screen? Does McQueen’s treatment of the historical movie/biopic change the way in which the race factor has been addressed so far in American cinema and is it a socially subversive intervention? One hundred years of silence 1 On Django Unchained, see Paquet-Deyris, 2016. 5At the time 12 Years a Slave was released, quite a few critical voices had already emphasized the impossibility of squaring “post-racialism” with contemporary material realities in the United States. The main comments had to do with the misrepresentation of the black experience on screen—including in movies where the lead actors were black—and with the lingering stereotypical treatment of racialized bodies. Even some movies and TV shows like Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 Django Unchained or Veena Sud’s 2018 Seven Seconds and Dan Fogelman’s 2016 This Is Us, reputed for championing a representational space for black bodies, critics claimed, were structured around a white male narrative arc to further the 6In 1984, American photographer and director Gordon Parks had already fictionalized Solomon Northup’s narrative of enslavement, adapting it for television under the title Solomon Northup’s Odyssey. But his protagonist interpreted by Avery Brooks very much fell into the “hypermasculine categor[y] of the Heroic Slave’ as famously invented by Frederick Douglass” Tillet 360. His representation of Northup bordered on the exceptional. By figuring the past, Parks felt compelled to construct an idealized heroic figure, thus bypassing the rules and conventions of the biopic. If we consider that the biopic’s fundamental tenets are to “[depict] the life of a historical person, past or present” Custen 5 and provide a certain degree of realism, objectivity, and verifiability, then this earlier adaptation of Twelve Years a Slave is by no means a classic biopic. Neither is 12 Years a Slave. Northup only recently became a “famous” public figure, largely thanks to McQueen’s film. As McQueen emphasized in numerous interviews, Twelve Years a Slave was seldom read even in African American literature classes and was not as well-known as slave narratives such as The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano 1789 and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave 1845 Roy 13-14. That 12 Years a Slave should relate the life of a real nineteenth-century free black man kidnapped into slavery is the main aspect that links it to the category of the biopic. Yet McQueen’s goal has little to do with “[the] genre’s charge, which […] is to enter the biographical subject into the pantheon of cultural mythology, one way or another, and to show why he or she belongs there” Bingham 10. As a violinist who was well integrated in Saratoga’s local community and provided for his family, Northup was in many ways an ordinary citizen, a status that stands in sharp contrast with the usual paradigm of heroization which is emblematic of the classic biopic. McQueen goes against the grain as he re-visions the biopic in a manner similar to Dennis Bingham’s in his 2010 Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre. For Bingham, the genre needs to be reevaluated as a complex, fast-evolving, impure category which can actually invent new ways of looking at the person and rendering his or her experience in some unadulterated way, making it virtually palpable. 2 In McQueen’s earlier movies Hunger 2008 and Shame 2011, the body is a symptom, the product of s ... 7McQueen uses a fractured storyline, artfully weaving past and present. He deploys flashbacks within flashbacks to stage the centrality of the body, which is both his artistic staple and the way in which independent film producers and early African American directors like Oscar Micheaux fought the relegation of black characters to the margins of the frame and In a conversation with Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., he talks about the use of the body in his work as follows All we have is our bodies. That’s our vessel. But what I am interested in is not necessarily that, but the subjects that are around it. […] The story is about the environment, and how individuals have to make sense of it, how we locate the self in events. The body is used, but it’s a byproduct of the bigger question. Gates 191 With the potential “too-much-ness” of unrelenting scenes of violence Gates 191, he voices what Michael Taussig calls “the public secret […] which is generally known, but cannot be articulated” Taussig 5. Countering the current effort to deliberately avoid the awareness of race, he flaunts every possible racial signal so as to “do […] justice” to “what took place in those times” Gates 192. 8In her introduction to Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, white abolitionist Lydia Maria Child similarly commented on this tale of sexual abuse by insisting that even though “[t]his peculiar phase of Slavery has generally been kept veiled […] the public ought to be made acquainted with its monstrous features, and I willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with the veil withdrawn” Andrews and Gates 747-748. In her essay “The Site of Memory,” Toni Morrison suggested as well that her mission was to “rip that veil drawn over proceedings too terrible to relate’” and to expose and articulate the unspeakable in her fiction Zinsser 191. Possibly inscribing it on screen for the first time in such a graphic way, this is also what McQueen resolutely does. The straight cut from the joyful dinner scene in Washington, DC, to the silence and darkness of the cell where Northup Chiwetel Ejiofor has been locked up materializes on screen “the dark night of slavery.” When Douglass uses the phrase in his Narrative, he foregrounds the taming process at work and its devastating effect on body and soul I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! Andrews and Gates 324 The breaking process starts all the more savagely for Northup as the contrast with his previous circumstances is total. The camera captures him having dinner at a fine restaurant with his white employers and giving a toast to celebrate his successful and profitable tour. Refined classical background music is heard before the straight cut to the dark basement where he finds himself in shackles. 9The brutal shift in atmosphere is thus effected thanks to a straight cut to a dark room and an absence of sounds, until Northup regains consciousness and is startled by the rattle of his chains. A metaphorical and actual “cage” of light visually enacts the dehumanizing process of slavery already at work. Just as rebel leader Joseph Cinqué Djimon Hounsou wrenches off the nail of his manacles in Steven Spielberg’s Amistad 1997, Northup tries to free himself from his chains. His uncomprehending stare at his own irons enacts the unthinkable and compels the viewer to face a world in which freedom has become an irrelevant concept. 10In the source autobiography, Northup describes his terror in the following terms From that moment I was insensible. How long I remained in that condition—whether only that night, or many days and nights—I do not know; but when consciousness returned, I found myself alone, in utter darkness, and in chains. Northup 37-38 After the in medias res beginning, the complex flashback structure of this sequence where at least three different time levels are interwoven allows for an even greater focus on the individual, which is one of the characteristics of the biopic genre. This is paradoxical as it takes place precisely at a time when Northup is denied the status of independent free human being. From this beautifully lit sequence and chiaroscuro shot on, the blurred frontiers between the black and white communities become more and more demarcated. 11Even though McQueen was working within the received conventions of the biopic while adapting a slave narrative, his representation of the black body met with harsh critical comments. The most common charge had to do with the misrepresentation of the black experience on screen and the stereotypical treatment of racial bodies mostly shown as suffering bodies. Historian Margaret Washington, for instance, insisted on the prevalent representation of black people as mere victimized bodies in the film There is no slave community in the movie. Instead, Platt [Northup’s slave name] is a silent observer of enslaved people who assert no agency, no struggle, and do not have a culture or a sense of morality. They are beaten-down victims. Only Platt wants “to live”; others are content to “survive.” However, in the actual narrative Platt describes how he fits into a slave community. He recounts for the reader the personalities, individualities and temperaments of enslaved people, and he relates their culture. […] In the movie, slaves are cotton-picking, cane-cutting stick figures; recipients of white violence; even sexually wanton. Miller 322-323 Ironically, some of McQueen’s early shots register on screen as snapshots of slavery, strange blended families mostly presented as surface images that catch but a fragment of a complex experience. But these early snapshots recomposing new “blended” families quickly interact to form a wider patchwork telling numerous interrelated true stories. Most of the black and white figures McQueen represents on screen end up being full-fledged characters having firmly established roles in a fully developed plantation system. Once Northup has been transported south, the various figures of the plantation unit start to interplay and interact so that the activities and the mindsets of slaves and masters alike are foregrounded. The geographical concentration of the enslaved men and women on the various plantations does not reflect homogenization in their representation, but instead further complicates the slave experience. It highlights for instance slave hierarchies in the plantation culture and the addiction of some masters to their black sex slaves or concubines. 12In 12 Years a Slave the visual and aural shock is so powerful that the debate over placing the black body at the center of the frame is displaced by that of constructing an authentic environment and narrative arc. What the director seems most intent on achieving is, as he told a film critic, “to present this as the life that people lived, and twist it” quoted in Thaggert 332. The film’s first intertitle against a black background—“This film is based on a true story”—is the exact opposite of a disclaimer clause. Everything the director purports to inscribe on screen derives from bona fide sources and therefore fits part of the definition of the biopic, which is to be based on the biography or portions of a historical person’s biography. But contrary to the classic division between “the pre-war biopic [which] tends to address its spectators as citizens [and] the post-war biopic [which] tends to address its spectators as consumers of popular culture” Neale 54, 12 Years a Slave first and foremost addresses the viewers as fully aware and responsible citizens. Blackness visible 13McQueen claims to cling to an authenticity which implies recoding Northup’s 1853 autobiographical narrative into a new set of signs and conventions, as well as a non-glossed-over visual inscription of slavery. As a result, he positions himself beyond debates over truth and falsehood, and sets out to bring about catharsis. Through the prism of film, he makes the viewers intimately touch on the reality of slavery, however briefly. To some extent, this runs contrary to the general goal of the classic biopic dramatizing the lifelong journey of a historically-based individual it ends up glorifying. As he mines the more recent formula of the “slice of life” biopic by focusing on Northup’s time as a slave, McQueen circumvents not only the Great White Male narrative, a vehicle of the dominant reactionary or conservative ideology, but the Great Black Male narrative as well. The multiplicity of viewpoints, especially of African American protagonists in a genre film—one in which “generic identification becomes a formative component of film viewing” Altman 277—then further complicates the issue. Does McQueen productively question how media can make apparent the incoherence and fragmentation of relatively recent real events in American history? And in the wake of four hundred years of slavery, what strategies does he adopt to inscribe both historical facts and fictional narratives on screen in a cohesive and coherent ensemble? Very early on his goal was to help the readers and spectators experience difference and similarity between two sign systems through intersemiotic transposition. Even when reading the book, he was already obsessed by the actual inscription of “those [unadulterated] images” on screen Seeing the images. All I wanted to do was see those images. That has always been the power for me. Seeing those images. When I read the book, I wanted to see those images. Slavery is like the elephant in the room, and what you do is sprinkle flour over it and make it visible. We have to confront this topic in a real way. No one’s blind anymore. No excuses. That’s the power of cinema. Gates 188 With Northup’s reverse trajectory from freedom to slavery and back to freedom, the usual framework of the slave narrative is inverted but also directly questioned as the un-sanitized depiction of slavery causes two time periods to overlap. The contemporary filmgoer’s view of the “peculiar institution” is fundamentally defamiliarized and reshaped as there is an uneasy temporal juxtaposition between the historical moment depicted graphically in the film and a belief that the type of racial inequality once institutionalized by slavery in the nineteenth century, then legally removed in the twentieth, is now completely and fully eradicated in the twenty-first. Thaggert 333 Such a strategy of disjunction and yet proximity between time periods literally and metaphorically plays with focal distance and generates viewer discomfort. Destabilizing the spectator entails focusing on individuated blacks whose complicated life stories interact with whites’. The shapes pain and suffering take in both communities are inscribed on screen in a singularly intense way. Each time, pain is literally embodied in flesh. Whether it be female or male pain, McQueen’s camera gets as close as possible to the suffering subject, at times capturing only part of his or her tortured body within the frame or filming for an excruciatingly long time a scene of near-lynching or whipping. 14In 12 Years a Slave, each disturbing “snapshot” fully extends into a scene or sequence which creates “cinematic discomfort” by “manipulating [the] representation of time and duration” Thaggert 334. McQueen compels the viewer to take in the centrality of the black body as it is both being subjugated and asserting agency and rebellion. From this point of view, the two unusually long scenes of Northup’s near-lynching and Patsey’s Lupita Nyong’o flogging participate in testing representational limits. With such an insistent showing mode, it is no longer possible to accommodate violence, nor is looking away an option. The visual experience of slavery McQueen imposes on the spectator is all the more inescapable as he consistently uses the key trope of violence in new ways. Close-ups of body parts like Northup’s feet barely touching the ground become powerfully metonymic of the whole person fighting “to survive,” as Northup tells Eliza Adepero Oduye. They circumvent any temptation to fetishize black visibility and suffering. They become the symptoms of some greater narrative arc that we have to follow to the end and which bridges the gap with today’s supposedly post-racial America. 15Miriam Thaggert underlines the way in which 12 Years a Slave captures how Americans became accustomed to the violence of slavery and draws a parallel with how they explore today’s racial subtext or confront head-on some overtly problematic racial content His representation charts the desensitization to violence in antebellum America; and […] the reactions to his film may suggest an increasing numbness, or tolerance, for subtle forms of discrimination in our own supposedly postrace America. Thaggert 334 The entire virtually silent scene uncompromisingly inscribes on screen the visual shock of the “photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout America” that collector James Allen uncovered while searching through the nation’s past. His book Without Sanctuary, which came out in 1994, has since then been reissued several times and has given rise to the much-accessed website “Without Sanctuary” complete with photos and a forum. 3 Hélène Charlery makes the case for the central role of Patsey in 12 Years a Slave in her contributi ... 16McQueen and Northup before him rework some of the classic tropes of African American culture. When focusing on enslaved black women, racial desirability and its devastating consequences are no longer exclusively connected to the figures of the tragic mulatta or the disposable “comfort girl.” The fatal attraction Patsey exerts on Epps Michael Fassbender actually gives rise to a long analysis of the young girl’s frame of mind and behavior which prevents the inscription of heavily stereotyped representations of black mistresses and white masters. The staging of the relationship between black sex slave and white master materializes on screen not so much another development of the great white narrative as an in-depth analysis of the girl’s own feelings of entrapment and desperation. The sections of the film relating to Patsey indeed operate as yet another peculiar biopic. In these sequences, the biopic stops being “differential in the role it assigns to gender” Custen 3 and reworks the classic black archetypal figure of the Tragic Woman. Patsey is a “historical person” in her own right Custen 5. She also becomes the focus of the biographical film which is consistently “minimally composed of the life, or the portion of a life, of a real person whose real name is used” Custen 6 even though she is neither a mulatta nor a bereft mother whose children have been sold away like 17Along with the latter, Patsey epitomizes a tragic facet of the objectified and brutalized woman while telling a very personal story. The crude scenes of sexual intercourse between master and slave never achieve any degree of intimacy. Paradoxically, the most intimate moments are those when the young girl is playing, oblivious to her surroundings, and making corn husk dolls. McQueen’s camera frames Patsey lost in the wonder world of childhood, sometimes only partly registering on screen as entire portions of her secret self and life cannot be captured and thus have to remain off screen. McQueen alternates shots focusing on Patsey’s ravaged body being manipulated and violated by the white masters, both male and female, and shots of the young girl asserting her own subjectivity and selfhood as when trying to convince Northup that he should end her life or coming up with strong arguments for Epps not to flog her. 18Hence the visual inscription of pathos and horror alternates with the materialization of self-assertion even if the final shot of Patsey is that of a small figure receding in the background as Northup is extracted from the plantation world. As he leaves behind the slave’s subhuman status, the camera captures him stepping up into the horse carriage on his way to regain his former identity and reintegrate his own New York state community. Shock corridor impossible closure? 19After viewing the film for the first time at the Paris press screening in 2014, members of the audience were left speechless. We had just emerged from what Samuel Fuller once called a “shock corridor” Shock Corridor, 1963 and felt compelled to remain silent, before eventually comparing the forceful impact of the movie with Richard Fleisher’s Mandingo 1975 among other films. The tagline of Fleisher’s film was “Expect the Truth,” and at the time he was one of the very few American moviemakers willing to confront race and slavery in a realistic way Paquet-Deyris, 2014. 20McQueen chooses a similar approach but he also further plays on the conventional tropes of African American culture. He revisits the classic definition and motifs of the biopic to make blackness visible in a contemporary Hollywood film and a context of white-controlled mass media organizations. Mediating Northup’s literary source, he turns it into a central filmic text imposing on the viewer a methodology to foreground underrepresented black bodies, experiences, and histories. He thus promotes a new kind of American national identity bypassing the frequent critical comment that “Blacks appear less individuated, more homogeneous [as] film reinforces Whites’ ignorance of Blacks’ variety and humanity” Entman and Rojecki 182. According to some critics, in order to come up with rich and complex ethnic and racial representations on screen, he sometimes overdoes the self-conscious capture of the past. Jim Down’s reaction is also typical of the type of visceral reactions the movie generated Unlike other films, or even books for that matter, that have the ability to transport me to another time and place, that make me forget that I am sitting in a movie theater, 12 Years a Slave did not achieve that level of literary, imaginative migration. Instead I could feel the director’s, screenwriters’, and actors’ efforts to so self-consciously capture the past. Miller 313 But through the emphasis on violence, the director, screenwriter, and cast allow the movie to clearly materialize what Toni Morrison calls “Unspeakable Things Unspoken” Morrison, fully disclosed on a global scale.

RalphN, L’hitlérisme n’était-il donc pas ce que l’on entend, lit et voit à la TV et au cinéma ? L’hitlérisme était-il donc généralement beaucoup moins cruel et féroce qu’on ne le montre dans l’imagerie d’Epinal »démocratique pour que »plus jamais ça n’arrive ? Attention, le Crif et son célèbre avocat pourraient vous attaquer en justice. Les complices de Hitler ont bel et bien existé, pourtant, les »résistants à cette »bonté hitlérienne sont donnés en exemple aux nouvelles générations. Par contre, il ne faut surtout pas montrer que des Africains luttèrent pour leur Liberté. Et pour cela on va même jusqu’à montrer la bonté de l’esclavagiste et son descendant colonialiste envers celui qu’il prive de liberté par les attaques italiennes contre l’Ethiopie en omettant de rappeler que Mussolini s’allia ensuite à Hitler pour être »moins cruel avec les Européens. Même si toute privation de liberté, quelque soit l’endroit du monde, le peuple concerné, appelle à une réaction inverse. »L’esclavage a toujours existé, partout et sous toutes les latitudes , dites-vous n’en parlons donc plus. Ou plutôt, s’il faut en parler, démontrons que les Africains adorent la servitude et ne peuvent s’en passer. Pour ce faire, montrons que soudain libérés » des camps de concentration, les anciens esclaves de Hitler ne furent pas le moins du monde effrayés de cette liberté » ou peureux » et tremblants », mais déchaînés » de joie ; montrons qu’à l’inverse et »À deux reprises au moins, au cours de l’Histoire, on a connu la réaction d’esclaves, soudain libérés, effrayés de cette liberté. Lors de la Guerre de Sécession, après la proclamation par les nordistes de la libération des esclaves du Sud, on a de nombreux témoignages qui nous montrent les esclaves non pas heureux et déchainés, mais peureux, tremblant, revenant vers leurs anciens maîtres pour reprendre leur place. Même chose lorsque l’Italie, victorieuse en Éthiopie, a proclamé la liberté des esclaves traditionnellement maintenus dans les tribus. » Ne montrons surtout pas que si l’Ethiopie fut vaincue lors de sa seconde agression par l’un des membre de la SDN, il y eut avant, une humiliante défaite des armées italiennes face aux Éthiopiens du négus Ménélik, à Adoua, le 1er mars 1896. Les Africains ne doivent pas le savoir, cela risquerait de donner des idées à certains mal intentionnés d’entre eux pour tenir tête aux héritiers de Mussolini et Hitler. Car ça conforte les descendants de leurs agresseurs dans leur ego surdimensionné de membre de la race supérieure » ayant des devoirs envers les races inférieures ». Aussi, malgré les démentis cinglants de l’Histoire il existera toujours des gens pour affirmer qu’un gouvernement étranger a pour vocation à proclame[r] la liberté des esclaves traditionnellement maintenus dans [leurs] tribus », à leur apporter la démocratie », même au bazooka » en détruisant leur pays. Les Irakiens, les Afghans, les Libyens, les Syriens, ne montrent-ils pas leur reconnaissance à leurs sauveurs » ? Non, eux, que des ingrats et les Africains reconnaissants, d’où ce besoin vital d’aliéner leur liberté en se soumettant à la race des Seigneurs » De la servitude volontaire chez les Humains, seuls deux exemples au moins » émergent de l’esprit et on ne peut les retrouver que chez les Africains comme ailleurs on trouve la répudiation dans le Coran. Prendre les effets pour la cause. Pourquoi ne pas chercher à comprendre le processus observé après cette guerre de Sécession, c’est-à-dire, ce besoin de l’esclave de préférer sa condition servile à sa liberté ? Tous les anciens esclaves préférèrent-ils retourner à leur servitude ou y en eut-il pour la refuser ? Pour les besoins de son idéologie, Ralph pense que non. Quels comportements adopte-t-on après des siècles de soumission d’un peuple à un autre si, seulement après quelques années de soumission l’hitlérisme a eu des complices au sein de ses victimes ? Quel peuple au monde ne présenterait pas le même de désir de servitude volontaire ? Les peuples d’Europe, bien évidemment ! Et avec l’aide des peuples sous leur domination. Comme quoi, il existe des peuples faits pour la soumission et d’autres pour leur domination. Face à l’agression italienne sur un pays membre de la SDN, les autres membres de cette Société restèrent muets. Une entente tacite entre gens de bonne compagnie, partageant la même idée d’eux-mêmes sûrement. En France, les partis de gauche comme de droite se refusent à sanctionner une violation du droit international pour complaire à un amalgame de tribus incultes » sic. » Une pléiade d’intellectuels et d’académiciens Thierry Maulnier, Pierre Gaxotte, Marcel Aymé... dénoncent la fureur d’égaliser » et des sanctions qui n’hésiteraient pas à déchaîner une guerre universelle, à coaliser toutes les anarchies, tous les désordres, contre une nation [l’Italie] où se sont affirmées, relevées, organisées, fortifiées depuis quinze ans quelques-unes des vertus essentielles de haute humanité ». "En Italie, la condamnation de la SDN a l’effet paradoxal de souder la population autour du Duce [dans le film selon l’auteur, les autres esclaves sont tellement pénétrés par leur condition servile qu’ils ne s’identifient plus à l’un des leurs, mais à leurs bourreaux. Les enfants jouent comme si de rien n’était -. Le vieux pape Pie XI 78 ans commet lui-même l’erreur de visiter une exposition consacrée à la conquête et de saluer l’expansion italienne aux dépens de l’Éthiopie chrétienne !. Son Secrétaire d’État, Eugenio Pacelli, futur Pie XII, tente de minimiser la portée de sa déclaration * » Pourtant, les Africains sont l’une des plus importantes communautés chrétiennes au monde. Comme quoi, avoir la servitude héritage a du bon, c’est un placement sûr pour ceux qui bénéficient de cette servitude devenue au fil des siècles volontaire. Peu après l’occupation de l’Éthiopie, le négus Haïlé Sélassié vient plaider la cause de son pays à Genève, devant les délégués de la SDN. Le 30 juin 1936, le petit homme frêle tout de blanc vêtu fait une grande impression sur les délégués et sur l’opinion publique mais n’entraîne aucune décision en sa faveur. Au contraire, inquiète pour la paix en Europe, la SDN lève les sanctions contre l’Italie le 4 juillet 1936. Trop tard. Mussolini est déjà en voie de se rapprocher de Hitler » Oui, RalphN, entre gens de bonne compagnie, on pense la même chose d’un amalgame de tribus » dont on trouve la prétention à défendre sa liberté mal venue. Et entre gens de bonne compagnie toujours, on oublie vite l’Histoire Jusqu’au jour où cela nous tombe dessus. Avez-vous lu le Discours sur le colonialisme » ? On dirait une répétition. Je crois que les Africains d’aujourd’hui ont plus que jamais, face aux héritiers idéologiques des Mussolini, Maulnier, Gaxotte, Aymé prêts à leur remettre les chaînes de l’esclavage physique, l’impératif devoir de plonger au plus profond de leur passé pour ne plus se laisser abuser et décident enfin que plus jamais ça » ne se produise. Ne devriez-vous pas vous demander pourquoi, à chaque fois qu’il s’agit des Africains, certains ne trouvent rien d’autre à faire qu’à minimiser, ridiculiser ?

12Years a Slave est un film réalisé par Steve McQueen (II) avec Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender. Synopsis : Les États-Unis, quelques années avant la guerre de Sécession.

Cinéaste engagé, McQueen avait déjà frappé les esprits à Cannes en 2008 avec "Hunger", sur la grève de la faim jusqu'au boutiste de Bobby Sands, leader de l'Armée républicaine irlandaise IRA, puis la Mostra de Venise avec "Shame", sur l'addiction sexuelle. Cette fois-ci, il voulait "faire un film sur l'esclavage. Je voulais voir des images sur ce passé là", racontait à la presse Steve McQueen lors de la présentation du film en avant-première mondiale au Festival international de Toronto début septembre, où il a raflé le prix. "Je n'arrivais pas à avancer quand ma femme m'a apporté le livre +12 years a slave+", poursuivait le cinéaste, qui savait que certains esclaves du Sud avaient été kidnappés dans les Etats du nord des Etats-Unis. Ce n'est que plus tard qu'il a découvert le livre autobiographique de Solomon Northup, musicien noir de l'Etat de New York, bien intégré dans la société, kidnappé en 1841 avant d'être vendu comme esclave. Son calvaire durera douze ans, d'où le titre du roman et du film. Le récit deviendra un best-seller en Amérique lors de sa publication en 1853, huit ans avant le début de la Guerre de Sécession. Par la suite, Solomon Northup a peu à peu sombré dans l'oubli. "Dès que j'ai eu le livre en main, je ne l'ai plus lâché, c'était remarquable. Chaque page était une révélation", selon le cinéaste. Le réalisme de la reconstitution des plantations étouffe progressivement le spectateur, qui ressent au plus profond la chaleur torride, les odeurs, les coups infligés aux esclaves. Steve McQueen espère que son film permettra d'ouvrir le débat sur l'esclavage. Souvenirs de liberté Pour l'acteur britannique Chiwetel Ejiofor "Inside man", "Salt", qui campe Solomon, "la force de cette histoire, c'est qu'elle est racontée à la première personne", déclarait-il à Toronto. "C'est un don du passé. Cela ne parle pas de race mais de dignité humaine, de nos libertés, de ce que nous voulons le plus dans ce monde." En dépit des humiliations quotidiennes, des maltraitances des propriétaires ou de leurs nervis, Solomon refuse d'abdiquer, combattant chaque jour l'injustice dans la mesure de ses faibles moyens. Il a une femme et deux enfants et des souvenirs de liberté qui l'aident à tenir autant qu'ils le torturent. En rentrant chez lui, dans une scène surréaliste, il demandera pardon à sa famille de n'avoir pas été là toutes ces années. "Il y a beaucoup de honte à propos de l'esclavage en Amérique et dans les Caraibes, mais il n'y a rien à se faire pardonner", jugeait McQueen. Michael Fassbender, acteur fétiche du réalisateur britannique, incarne Edwin Epps, propriétaire d'esclaves alcoolique, violent et tourmenté. Le comportement de Epps était tellement épouvantable qu'encore aujourd'hui en Louisiane, on utilise l'expression "arrête de faire ton Epps". Dans ses mémoires, Northup le décrit comme "grossier et repoussant" et "n'ayant jamais reçu les bénéfices d'une éducation". Benedict Cumberbatch "Le Cinquième pouvoir" campe un propriétaire apparemment plus humain même s'il sépare une mère de ses enfants lors d'un achat d'esclaves. Brad Pitt, qui a financé en partie le film, incarne, lui, un charpentier canadien abolitionniste qui aidera Solomon à recouvrir la liberté. L'une des révélations du film est l'actrice kenyanne Lupita Nyong'o, souffre-douleur de Epps. L'actrice et réalisatrice née au Mexique, qui a grandi au Kenya avant de faire ses études aux Etats-Unis, fait dans ce film ses débuts américains sur grand écran. "12 Years a Slave", qui a remporté dimanche dernier le Golden Globe du meilleur film dramatique, le plus prestigieux, fait déjà figure de favori pour les prochains Oscars 2 mars, aux côtés de "Gravity" ou "American Bluff", avec neuf nominations dont meilleur acteur et meilleur réalisateur. AFP Relax News

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12 years a slave streaming vf