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French Culture Through Film Students Meet Filmmaker Alice Diop
On Thursday November 7th, the French Language and Cultures students had the opportunity to meet French filmmaker Alice Diop during a Bennington College talk. She was accompanied by her editor, Amrita David and translator, Nicholas Elliot. Diop is a French screenwriter and director from a Senegalese family. The French class had recently studied her documentary Nous (We), a delicate portrait of fundamentally different communities living along the RER B train that traverses the Paris suburbs.
On Thursday November 7th, the French Language and Cultures students had the opportunity to meet French filmmaker Alice Diop during a Bennington College talk. She was accompanied by her editor, Amrita David and translator, Nicholas Elliot. Diop is a French screenwriter and director from a Senegalese family. The French class had recently studied her documentary Nous (We), a delicate portrait of fundamentally different communities living along the RER B train that traverses the Paris suburbs.
From an African immigrant mechanic living in his van, to a group of royalists in the St Denis Church, she offers a look at those connected only by mundane, everyday tasks. Transportation, work, and the mere fact that they live in France putting the “We” into question. Diop won the best documentary prize for Nous at the Berlin festival in 2021, followed by her latest achievement and first full-length feature St Omer which took the Grand Jury prize for best film at the Venice festival in 2023. The latter was also nominated to represent France at the Oscars.
Throughout the talk, several Bennington College students acting as moderators asked questions to both Diop and David regarding the scene sequencing, the slow deployment of characters, and the choice of still shot for an entire scene. These features had been examined by the Burr & Burton French students, enhancing the integrated aspect of the course and further engaging those involved in film studies.
Writer and translator Nicholas Elliot blew the students away with his expert interpreting. Although Diop speaks English, she prefers to use a translator in order to fully express her thoughts, uninterrupted, rather than attempting to do so in a language that is not her own. While she speaks (for lengthy periods), Elliot simultaneously takes notes. When she is ready, she gives him the floor and he brilliantly becomes her voice, in English.
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