Concerto for an Exile + Take Care France
To mark Black History Month, we celebrate the contributions of Afro-Canadian filmmakers to the national cinema.
In an ironic tone, Concerto for an Exile presents the lives of four Africans in Paris: a seducer, a sweeper, a union member, and a student. The characters look out for each other, call each other, come and go, all accompanied by nostalgia.
Evoking mixed marriages and their difficulties, the author depicts the wandering of a young black husband, an elegant dandy, who has come to Paris to find his young white wife and their little girl.
Désiré Écaré
Désiré Écaré is an Ivorian filmmaker. He established his own production company, Les Films de la Lagune, to create his first film, Concerto for an Exile (1968), based on a theme proposed by his wife: the social and psychological alienation of Africans living in Paris. To achieve this, he sold his own car and received ten rolls of film from Jean-René Debrix, then head of the cinema office. After viewing the initial rushes, the director of Argos Films provided the necessary funds to complete his film. He would explore the same theme in a satirical manner with Take Care France (1970) before directing, 15 years later, the film Faces of Women which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985.
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