In the 1950s, French people in France discovered the West Indies in cinemas, territories that were so far away and so little known. Most often, the images seen and the comments heard reflected the clichés of the colonial mentality. It was not until Jean Lehérissey's short film La montagne est verte (awarded the Jean-Vigo prize in 1951) that, for the first time, the truth about this part of national history was brought to the screen.
This documentary tells the story of the emergence of West Indian cinema over the last fifty years.
A militant cinema, it has fought to exist, but it remains unjustly little known, often in the shadow of French cinema. Yet it has some great films. Notably Rue Cases-Nègres by Euzhan Palcy (Silver Lion and César for the best first film), Nèg Maron, Aliker, Sucre amer... and, more recently, comedies such as Antilles sur Seine or La Première Étoile. All of them embrace major issues of our time such as colonial heritage, identity, racism and the representation of black actors on screen.
In a way, West Indian cinema has its origins in the same questioning and demands that ran through the Afro-American cinema of the 1970s, dubbed "blaxploitation".