Photo by Raphaël O’Byrne

Monday 11 | 4:45pm | Segal Theatre

Réunion | 2018 | 48 minutes | directed by Sophie Louÿs
produced by We Film (Jonathan Rubin, François Magal)
Creole & French with English subtitles

In Reunion Island, green casuarinas are swept by trade winds. We skim the black sandy
earth until we reach the center and come upon a stage, a “ron,” where poets succeed
one another to deliver their “fonnkers” and perpetuate the Creole language. Their
bodies vibrate, their feet stomp the basaltic soil to invoke the secret tale. The poem
thus becomes the ritual for an identity quest. Tonight is kabar night “Ôté fonnkézer!
Rant dann ron, detak la lang, demay lo kèr!” (Oh Poet! Walk on stage, free your tongue,
untangle your heart!) The texts of these poems have urged us to resist for the past forty
years. Could their panting souls be whispering the possibility of resilience to our ears?

Photo by Corine Telier

Sophie Louÿs is an author and documentary director from Reunion
Island. The practice of giving birth and filmmaking has led her to
various corners of the world (Mali, Madagascar, Easter Island, sub
Antarctic islands). Her current work and research question the
consequences of history and colonization on each of us. Dann fon
mon kèr is her latest film.