Faculty Produced Film ‘Suzanne Césaire’ Starts Fall Tour of Festivals in Toronto

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, an experimental film about the Martinican feminist writer produced by Visual and Media Arts Associate Professor Michael Ryan, will screen at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September, before moving on to festivals in Vienna, London, and New York.

The film, directed by Madeline Hunt-Ehrlich, premiered in January 2024 at the Rotterdam Film Festival, where Hunt-Ehrlich was nominated for a Tiger Award, and has gone on to win Best Film at Filmadrid in Spain. Ryan developed the project over four years, and received support from Creative Capital and the Jerome Foundation. At TIFF, it will screen in the Wavelengths section, dedicated to avant-garde work.

Suzanne Césaire was a writer and feminist thinker of the 1930s and ‘40s whose legacy has been overshadowed by men working in the Caribbean at the same time, not least of whom was her own husband, the writer Aimé Césaire.

A 24-minute version of the feature called Too Bright to See (Part I) is being shown at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art through August as part of the Whitney Biennale, before continuing its tour of U.S. museums into 2025.