Bob Swaim’s Lumières noires (2006) recalls the story of the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists held at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1956. The documentary focuses on the three days of debate among intellectuals from Africa and the African diaspora, including leaders of the Négritude movement Aimé Césaire, Alioune Diop, and Léopold Sédar Senghor, and many others. This unprecedented international gathering faced resistance from American, French, and Soviet governments at the time, yet prevailed in fundamentally transforming black cultural and political identity forever.

A post-screening discussion will be led by Bianca M. Morán.

About the Filmmaker

Bob Swaim is a film director, writer, and producer with over forty years of experience in the field. Swaim is a member of numerous professional organizations, including the Directors Guild of America, Writers Guild of America, European Film Academy, and the French Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma, among others. His films have been honored with awards from over thirty film festivals and international competitions including the French César Awards and the Berlinale’s UNICEF Prize for Best Feature. He directed the documentary Lumières noires in 2006.

About the Participants

Edwin Hill is Associate Professor of French and Italian and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. Hill's research seeks to highlight the marginalized intellectual and cultural traffic between France and the Americas. He has published and/or presented on contemporary Caribbean writers, Sub-Saharan francophone literature, African American popular music, French chanson, and francophone hip hop. Similarly, his teaching interests, while focused on black vernacular culture and France, extend from the poetry of Négritude writers to postcolonial explorations of contemporary francophone writers and musicians. His current book project, Black Static, locates rage as a sonic/affective vibration routed through the circuits of African diasporic musical culture, travel, and communication. It focuses on a range of musicians and writers, from Nina Simone and militant rap artist Casey to Frantz Fanon and Ta-Nehisi Coates. He is also at the beginning stages a third book project: a critical biography of Léon Gontran-Damas.

Bianca M. Morán is a curator and educator based in Los Angeles. She is invested in the deconstruction of anti-blackness within notions of “Latinidad” through interrogations of visual culture and historical narratives in both the U.S. and Latin America. Her research interests include history, decolonial futurity, race and ethnicity, education and pedagogy, political theory, film, and visual culture. She is currently pursuing an M.A. in Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere at USC and holds an M.Ed. in Education from UCLA and a B.A. in Political Science from UC Berkeley. She was born in Los Angeles and raised between the Bay Area and LA. Bianca is also a single mother raising her daughter, Paloma.