With this film essay, Alain Resnais and Chris Marker narrate the genesis, development and epilogue of Black art, through a suggestive and effective formal and thematic analysis of artistic artifacts. The film is a pamphlet on the Western World’s commercialization of this art, a denunciation of capitalism and every other form of abuse and power, but it’s also about authentic artistic creations tied to pantheistic African culture, whose production over time became a mere mercantile activity aimed at satisfying a Western public. Commissioned by the publisher/magazine “Présence Africaine”, founded in Paris in 1947 by Senegalese thinker Alioune Diop, Les statues meurent aussi, after its Premiere at the Cannes Festival in 1953, and although it won the Jean Vigo Prize in 1954, was censored due to its anti-colonialist stance. The film was finally released in its entirety in 1968.

Alain Resnais (Vannes, 1922 – Paris, 2014)
A French director, he was one of the main figures of Truffaut and Godard’s Nouvelle Vague, though he never  officially joined. He directed documentaries on artistic subjects, including Van Gogh, which won an Oscar for the commentary written by Gaston Diehl and Robert Hessens, as well as Guernica and other anti-Nazi films such as Night and Fog, produced in collaboration with Chris Marker. He directed such masterpieces as Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and Life Is a Novel  (1982). 

Chris Marker (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1921 – Paris, 2012)
A French director, screenwriter, director of photography, producer, and photographer: after taking a degree in Philosophy with Jean-Paul Sartre, he worked as a photographer, journalist, and novelist. He made his cinema debut with the documentary Olympia 52 (1952), about the Helsinki Olympiad. His most famous film is La Jetée (1962), a short which inspired director Terry Gilliam’s film 12 Monkeys. In 1982, he produced Sans Soleil,  and in 2004 Chats perchés, which was screened at the Centre Pompidou.