Sugar Cane Alley
Palcy’s first feature as a director is a searing critique of colonialism in her home country of Martinique.
Film/Video Theater
(Euzhan Palcy, 1983)
Euzhan Palcy in person
Presented by the Wexner Center for the Arts and The Ohio State University Office of Academic Affairs
Set in Martinique in the early 1930s, Sugar Cane Alley follows the lives of young Jose (Garry Cadenat) and his grandmother M’Man Tine (Darling Légitimus) as they eke out a daily living by toiling in the harsh conditions of a French-owned sugar cane plantation. Despite their lives of hardship, M’Man and Jose dedicate themselves to his education in hopes it will lead to a happier future for the two of them. Winner of the César Award (the French equivalent of the Oscars) for Best First Feature Film. Based upon Joseph Zobel’s semi-autobiographical novel. A Q&A with Palcy follows the screening. In French and Martinican Creole with English subtitles. (103 mins., DCP)
“With my camera I don’t shoot, I heal. I try to repair the wounds of history. One film at a time.”