Césaire Contre Aragon
Guy Deslauriers
Martinique | 2018 | 50 min.
Presented by the director
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"Whether the poem turns nicely or poorly on the oil of its hinge…kiss it off Depestre kiss it off and let Aragon go on about it! "
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This frontal attack against the poet Louis Aragon, contained in a letter/poem by Aimé Césaire to Haitian poet René Depestre in 1955, became a historic moment. It is through this that Césaire, Depestre, Aragon — and through them France, the Antilles and Africa — find themselves in the heart of one of the most fertile post-war poetic controversies. This spilled out of the literary circles to inaugurate one of the political reversals that shook the 20th century… But why, by way of Depestre, did Césaire act with so much violence against à Aragon?
Guy Deslauriers has been passionate about the cinema since an early age, thanks to his parents who loved art houses. During his years at Lycée Schœlcher in Martinique, he enrolled in the Sermac Cinema Ateliers in Fort-de-France, where he remained for several years. After his degree and training at ECPA, at the same time he was working on a literature degree, he continued to train as a film director, working on various films that were shot in Martinique.
In 1982, he was an intern on the film Rue Cases Nègres. Moving to Paris as of 1983, he worked as an assistant-director until 1988, when de directed his first short film: Quiproquo. Since then, Guy Deslauriers has directed several documentaries for television including Edouard Glissant, Sorciers, Femmes-Solitude, La Tragédie de la Mangrove, Clara et les Majors, and Césaire contre Aragon.
L'Exil du roi Béhanzin, his first feature film, was shown at many international festivals and won several prizes. His second feature, Passage du milieu, was also shown at several international festivals (Toronto, Sundance). After Biguine in 2004, his fourth feature film, Aliker, was also well-received on the international scene.