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Moune Ô

Still from the film "Moune Ô" by Maxime Jean-Baptiste. People walk through a crowded street with musical instruments in their hands.
© Maxime Jean-Baptiste
  • Director

    Maxime Jean-Baptiste

  • French Guiana, France, Belgium / 2022
    17 min. / Original version with English subtitles

  • Original language

    French

“I close my eyes. The crowd makes me smile, breaks my body, and that’s the end.” 
By presenting the festive events which accompanied the premiere of the film JEAN GALMOT, AVENTURIER (1990) by Alain Maline, in which the filmmaker’s father played a role, the images of MOUNE Ô reveal the survival of the colonial inheritance within a western collective unconscious always marked as stereotypes. From little gestures of daily life, the resistance toward oppression comes in its own rhythm.

Maxime Jean-Baptiste is a filmmaker based in Brussels and Paris. He was born to a French mother and a Guyanese father and raised in the context of the Guyanese and Antillean diaspora in France. His interest as an artist is to dig inside the complexity of western colonial history by detecting the survival of traumas from the past in the present. His first film NOU VOIX (2018) was selected in about thirty festivals and art exhibitions. His second movie, LISTEN TO THE BEAT OF OUR IMAGES (2021), co-directed with his sister Audrey Jean-Baptiste, was selected at CPH:DOX (Special Mention), Hotdocs, and ISFF Clermont-Ferrand, among many others.

Production Antoinette Jattiot, Théo Deliyannis. Production companies La Loge (Brüssel, Belgium), Collectif Jeune Cinéma (Paris, France). Director Maxime Jean-Baptiste. Editing Maxime Jean-Baptiste. Music Josy Mass. Sound design Aida Merghoub. Sound Maxime Jean-Baptiste. With Gilbert Jean-Baptiste (Voice). 

Films

2018: Nou voix (14 min.). 2021: Listen to the Beat of Our Images (with Audrey Jean-Baptiste, 16 min.). 2022: Moune Ô.

Bonus Material

  • Still from the film "Moune Ô" by Maxime Jean-Baptiste. Close up of two toddlers in green clothes

    Interview

    A correspondence between Samah Hijawi and Maxime Jean-Baptiste introduces some elements of the film, through a wider reflection on “aesthetic of the political”

  • On black background is written: „Le film commence“ and underneath „The movie begins“.

    Trailer

    “I close my eyes. The crowd makes me smile, breaks my body, and that’s the end.” An examination of footage from a film premiere leads to the investigation of colonial continuities and family histories.

Program Schedule

Funded by:

  • Logo Minister of State for Culture and the Media
  • Logo des Programms NeuStart Kultur