36
Flashmag! Issue 171 April 2026
How did you construct this device— and were you surprised by the vulnerability of the participants? The device grew directly from the Meetup experience. I wanted something convivial. Without a specific venue at first, I activated my contacts, which led me to Thomas Léveillé, owner of the Barber Studio in Paris’ s 11th arrondissement. As soon as I explained my project, he wanted to join the roundtable— and offered me a visually richer space than anything I’ d envisioned, with a recording studio as a secondary set.. With the participants, I worked as I would for a marketing focus group: they knew we’ d be discussing skin color and mixed heritage with strangers, but they didn’ t know I’ d be presenting a historical document. That was intentional— the surprise was meant to spark the conversation. The challenge was making them comfortable, getting them to open up. I had to implicate myself, reveal myself first, and create a safe space. The individual interviews came afterward, and in that order, the accounts were far more authentic. I had no idea what I’ d get— I was incredibly lucky to receive testimonies that were singular and radically different from one another. That diversity of profiles is what makes the film unique.
TV program“ Ciné afro” interview
36
Colorism & Colonial Legacies
Your film shows that skin color can be both a privilege and a handicap. How do you define this color privilege, and how did it structure certain life trajectories from the time of slavery onward?
It is a societal construction: the Black person built as inferior, the white person as superior. I became conscious of this very early, particularly through my father. My grandmother would say about herself that she was ugly because she was Black— hard to hear as an eight-year-old. My father wanted us to have no visible connection to Africa, yet wanted my brother to keep his Afro. I understood that he had internalized a contempt for Africa inherited from his colonial education: as an Antillean, he saw himself as closer to the White man than to a continent he’ d been taught to view as backward. He did not see himself as a descendant of enslaved people— until the day my brother uncovered an archive showing our ancestor freed in 1849, by the name of MONNATUS.