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Al-Ahram Weekly
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Fanon on film - Culture - Al-Ahram Weekly
Perhaps rather in the way of passengers on London buses, which have a reputation for keeping people waiting beyond scheduled arrival times and then showing up in groups of two, French audiences now have the opportunity to see not one but two films about the life and times of the Martinican psychiatrist and Algerian independence activist Frantz Fanon. Both films are biopics, and both focus on the years that Fanon spent at Blida, a town some 45 km southwest of Algiers, after his appointment to the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in 1953. He resigned in 1956 to devote himself to the struggle for Algerian independence from France. The first film, called Fanon and directed by French director Jean-Claude Barny, takes in Fanon's arrival in Blida in 1953, his attempted reorganisation of the medical services provided at the Hospital, and his eventual resignation in 1956 before joining the Front de Libération nationale (FLN), the Algerian independence movement. It ends with Fanon working for the FLN in neighbouring Tunisia as a writer on the movement's French-language newspaper El Moudjahid and with the diagnosis of the leukemia that led to his early death at the age of only 36 in 1961. The second film, released in cinemas just weeks after the first and called Frantz Fanon, is directed by Algerian director Abdenour Zahzah. It also focuses on the years that Fanon spent in Blida before leaving to devote himself to the struggle for Algerian independence. However, whereas Barny's film, working with what seems to have been a larger budget, invites audiences to place Fanon's growing political radicalisation at the centre of their sense of him, Zahzah focuses instead on Fanon's work as a psychiatrist. His film, made in black and white and without the overblown soundtrack that is such a feature of Barny's film, presents Fanon as a medical professional, though one working in and rebelling against the colonial context. His Fanon rarely if ever leaves his place of work – quite a contrast to Barny's who is shown driving around the countryside, attending FLN meetings, confronting the French army, and finally moving to Tunis. Both films plunge audiences back into the political debates in France in the 1950s, when the future of its then remaining colonies, at first up in the air, was effectively decided by the decision to withdraw from what was then French Indochina, now Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, following defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese independence movement the Viet Minh in 1954. Morocco and Tunisia, then French protectorates, became independent in 1956 without notable violence, but the case was different in Algeria, a French colony rather than a protectorate, a history of colonialism going back to 1830, and a European population of some 1.6 million. Algeria only became independent in 1962 following a long and bloody independence war that witnessed atrocities on both sides. Lasting scars were inflicted at enormous cost in terms of material losses and human lives. French intellectual life also became focused on the country's relationship with its soon to be former colonies. Writers such as Albert Camus, himself Algerian born, Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Aron, Andre Malraux, Albert Memmi, of Tunisian origin, Jean-Paul Sartre, and many others all took up positions on the Algerian war. This heady set of circumstances was added to by writings on colonialism and the search for independence by writers such as Aimé Césaire in the Caribbean – his book Cahier d'un retour au pays natal is about the colonised condition of his native land, which, like Fanon's, was Martinique – and the Sub-Saharan African and African diaspora figures gathered around the review Présence africaine, including first president of independent Senegal Leopold Sedar Senghor. Fanon intervened in these political and intellectual debates with his own philosophically and psychologically inflected writings on colonialism, post-colonialism, and cultural and racial difference. He began to publish these in 1952 even before his posting in Algeria, with the best-known being Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks), a meditation on racism owing much to the existentialist philosophy of Sartre that was then fashionable in France. This book is presented in Zahzah's film as having first drawn the attention of the FLN to this unorthodox, but still obscure, young psychiatrist who had joined the Blida Hospital at the beginning of what was supposed to be a medical career. There is also a moment in Barny's film when a copy of the book is discovered on Fanon's shelves. He points to the others and says that they are the works of Sartre. Peau noire, masques blancs began a vein of examining race-based subjugation and the search for freedom that was later carried forward in different form in books such as Les Damnés de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth) and L'An V de la Révolution algérienne (A Dying Colonialism) on the impact of colonialism in Algeria and prospects for post-colonial government. Fanon saw the promise of independence in Algeria as part and parcel of the freedom from the fatal dialectics of black and white identified in the earlier book and played out in another form in the poisonous relation of coloniser and colonised in France's North African colonies. Fanon and Frantz Fanon: Barny's film is the longer and more wide-ranging of the two and presents a Fanon who, at first at sea in Algeria, gradually comes to understand that it is impossible to practice psychiatry, at least his kind of psychiatry, under colonial conditions. Arriving at the Blida Hospital, Fanon is shown entering a house of horrors where patients are chained up in cellars and treated less as human beings and more as the bearers of conditions not amenable to effective therapy. Fresh from his psychiatric studies in France and convinced of the value of new techniques that seem closer to modern standards of psychotherapeutic treatment, Fanon releases the patients, introduces what might now be called occupational therapy, chiefly football matches and art classes, and encourages the patients to express themselves and become more involved in their care. All this is presented as revolutionary in the film, and perhaps it was in the context of colonial Algeria, except that while Fanon had spent some time at the St Alban Psychiatric Hospital in the south of France where he had been introduced to the psychotherapeutic methods associated with one of its leading figures, the iconoclastic psychiatrist Francois Tosquelles, it is known that he could also be quite orthodox in his medical views. Trained as a medical doctor rather than as a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, or psychoanalyst, he is known to have relied upon the usual panoply of medical treatments for long-term patients recommended at the time, including various drug therapies, electroconvulsive therapy, and insulin comas, which are frowned upon today. However, Barny's interest is less in the details of Fanon's psychiatric methods at Blida and more on his growing political awareness and sense that practicing psychiatry under colonial conditions was likely to lead to intolerable conflicts. Patients are shown being arrested at the Hospital during police raids on suspicion of membership of the FLN, and Fanon himself is shown attending FLN recruitment sessions in the surrounding countryside. His position as a senior member of the medical profession becomes untenable, leading him to abandon his career. Zahzah's film, this time called Frantz Fanon, also focuses on Fanon's Blida years and begins with the arrival of this young doctor – he was just 28 years old – in a hospital that, looking to France for its senior staff, drew on the so-called Algiers School of Psychiatry for its medical bearings. This had pioneered a diagnosis handed down to the Hospital's native Algerian, as opposed to European, patients, who could be identified as suffering from a mixture of lassitude and outbreaks of violence thought at the time to be related to less developed impulse and motor control. Arriving in the Blida Hospital following a period spent trying to introduce more humane methods of psychiatric treatment during his medical training in France, Fanon began to look for ways to break traditionally hierarchical doctor-patient relationships. Zahzah's film does not present the Blida Hospital as being the house of horrors imagined by Barny, and it is probably more accurate about what went on there. Fanon is at first assigned to treat the Hospital's European patients, where his methods achieve some degree of success, and only later is he assigned to treat the Algerians. Zahzah's film, more modest than Barny's, is the more thought-provoking of the two. Both films draw upon cases reported by Fanon in Les Damnés de la Terre, where in the chapter on 'Colonial War and Mental Disorders' he suggests that the psychological disorders of his Algerian and European patients were related to the colonial context in which they lived. He questioned the diagnoses of the Algiers School, suggesting that the symptoms exhibited by his Algerian patients were best understood as a response to the colonial situation in Algeria rather than, as the School had suggested, a form of 'reactive paleophrenia' associated with the influence of the 'reptilian brain' or so-called 'North African Syndrome.' In the films, two cases, one of a French police officer who beats his wife and children and one of two Algerian boys, 13 and 14 years old, who kill a French playmate, are woven into the narrative. These are described as 'reactive disorders' in Les Damnés de la Terre, and in Zahzah's film they are used illuminatingly to suggest the ways in which Fanon's work at Blida, and his growing sense of psychiatry in a colonial context, were related to his earlier work, inspired by Sartre, on the psychopathologies of racism in metropolitan France. One thing that neither film can do is answer all the questions audiences might have about what went on in Blida and its relationship to the essays on Fanon's psychiatric practice and analysis of colonialism. This is true of the essay on 'Medicine and Colonialism,' for example, mostly about the relationship between Algerian patients and French medical professionals, as well as those 'On Violence' and 'Colonial War and Mental Disorders.' Many readers over the years will have read these essays and wished that Fanon had had more time to develop his ideas and that the essays themselves, sometimes just hypotheses thrown out in the hurry to the press, had contained pointers to the way he carried out his medical consultations and the relation of the cases to his clinical notes, presumably long since destroyed. Ecrits sur l'aliénation et la liberté, published in 2018, a collection of previously uncollected pieces by Fanon that includes his psychiatric writings, is an essential resource, especially the introductory material by editor Jean Khalfa. French audiences might also be advised to see Zahzah's film, which sends one back to Fanon with a new appetite. * A version of this article appears in print in the 7 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Biopic explores the life and legacy of Frantz Fanon, a century after his birth
Soldier, psychiatrist, philosopher... who was Frantz Fanon? A new film by director Jean-Claude Barny seeks to answer that question in a year that marks a century since the birth of one of the most influential figures in 20th-century anti-colonial thought. Barny, who hails from Guadeloupe, said it was important to understand Fanon's Caribbean culture, his Western culture, his African culture, but also to view him as a man "capable of absorbing all cultures" – and of detaching himself from them too. "I started reading everything I could get my hands on and looking at everything I could about Fanon. I had a kind of [binge] of curiosity, of information, of pedagogy, to be able to understand what I was going to do with it and why," Barny told RFI, ahead of the film's release in French cinemas on 2 April. Born on 20 July 1925, in Fort-de-France, Martinique, Fanon led a colourful life. He was a soldier in the French liberation army fighting the Nazis, then a young doctor in training in Lyon in the 1950s. His exposure to racism in these environments became the basis for his first major book, Black Skin, White Masks, published in 1952. 'Paris Noir' exhibition showcases work made in French capital by black artists In his film Fanon, which took 10 years to make, Barny chose to explore a critical chapter of Fanon's life; his time as head psychiatrist in Blida, a small town in Algeria 45km south-west of Algiers, between 1953 and 1960. Read more on RFI EnglishRead also:The night of rebellion that changed France and Algeria forever'Paris Noir' exhibition showcases work made in French capital by black artistsAlgeria's colonial past still haunts 60 years after independence
The Guardian
22-03-2025
- The Guardian
Saddle up: 10 of the best horse riding breaks in Europe
Known for their fortitude and amiable nature, Andalusian-thoroughbred cross horses are ideal partners for this adventure in the Sierra de Gredos west of Madrid. Fit, experienced riders can expect up to seven hours daily in the saddle, with plenty of pace. The guided trails follow the route of the Tormes River, taking in pine forests, plateaux, ravines and villages. A support truck delivers aperitivos and picnics, including table and chairs, leaving time for a swim and siesta, before returning to the Parador de Gredos each evening. From £1,200 for four nights including rides and meals, next departure 16 April, There's no choice but to slow right down on this Gypsy caravan camping trip. The wagon is harnessed to two mares, Meg and Biddy, who are led at a gentle walk by proprietor Barny down quiet country lanes to an off-grid site in the Eden valley, which links the Lake District to the north Pennines. Barny sets up a fire pit and canopy and tends the horses, returning to break camp after a night or two. The beautifully decorated wagons are insulated and can sleep a family of up to five. There's a hot shower, cooking is on open fires, swimming is in streams, druid circles can be explored. Travel light and spare the £960 for four nights, year round, Just under an hour from Paris in the Rambouillet forest, Le Barn is a former equestrian farm that has been turned into a stylish and welcoming retreat where every room looks out on to meadows. It shares its 200 hectares (500 acres) with Haras de la Cense, a world-famous school for equestrian skills. There is plenty of riding on offer (as well as Nordic baths, yoga, cycling, swimming and even a dog to pet). But the magic is the weekly Whisperer's Experience, a masterclass in learning how to forge a connection by working on foot with a free horse and using your body language and exercises to communicate with them and build trust. Be warned, it's emotional. From £165 a night for two B&B, including whispering and all other activities, The Greeks have known the value of riding since Hippocrates, medicine's founding father, spoke about its 'healing rhythm'. Where better to learn to ride than the countryside of Crete, with views over the Lagada valley, reliable horses and ponies (for kids aged five and over), starting with a bareback introduction in an enclosed ring, progressing to walking, trotting and possibly cantering through the olive groves by the end of the week. Guests stay in a 12-room, stone-built boutique hotel set in a couple of hectares in Avdou. Saddle-sore beginners can recover by the infinity pool or on the sandy beaches of nearby holiday town £935 for seven nights including meals and daily rides, year round, Take your horse on holiday and enjoy the company of red deer, native ponies and soaring buzzards as you ride the heather- and gorse-covered moorland, woodland and trails of Exmoor national park. At the self-catered converted stone barn on private rolling farmland, there's stabling and grazing for three horses. Host Louise is on hand as a guide. Saunton Sands is a four-mile beach open to riders year round – a gallop from one end to the other takes 15 fantastic minutes. From £135 a night, horses from £12.50 a day, guiding from £50, year round, For confident riders, this circular ride of about 75 miles over five days explores unspoilt Transylvanian backwaters where locals still use horses and carts for transport. Starting at Count Kálnoky's restored guesthouse in Miklósvár, riders head north, enjoying views of the Carpathian mountains. They pass through villages and the Hatod region's forests to the slopes of the Olt River. Accommodation is in modest farms or guesthouses, including a retreat near Zalánpatak (also called Valea Zălanului) owned by King Charles III, 60 miles and a far cry from Dracula's Castle. Horses are lively and well mannered crossbreeds, Lipizzaners, and robust Huzuls (also known as Huculs).From £1,225 for six nights including riding, accommodation, guiding and meals, from April to October, A family-run farm and horse sanctuary high above Cartmel valley, just south of the Lake District national park, is the setting for an unusual B&B experience. Guests checking into the Grade-II listed barn at Greenbank Farm get to share their living quarters with a friendly friesian horse. On one side of the barn are bunk beds with heated blankets, cobbled floor, kitchenette, and wet-room. On the other side of a half-height transparent divide is your equine room-mate, whose noble face appears delightfully over the top bunk the minute you're installed, seeking snacks and invading your space. Come dawn, he'll gently snuffle you awake for breakfast. Or you could choose to spend the night with a shetland pony, who will share your own side of the stable. Cartmel village and racecourse is next £360 for one night, sleeps up to three people, year round, What Icelandic horses lack in stature, they make up for with superpowers: strength, apparent immunity to the cold and an extra gait, the tölt. Daily rides (with kit) across Iceland's largely uninhabited north-western area, just a few degrees south of the Arctic Circle, take in meadows, the slopes of Reykjafjall mountain, the hot springs of the Gufudalur valley, and the glacial River Ölfusá (a landscape so extraordinary that Nasa astronauts prepped for lunar landings here). Evenings include restorative dips in warm geothermal water, hot tubs amid snowfall and, possibly, the northern lights. A farewell minibus tour includes the famed spouting Geysir geothermal area, golden waterfall Gullfoss and Thingvellir national £995 for three nights including rides, meals and guesthouse accommodation, next departure 10 March, Experience first-hand the powerful bond between horses and humans by volunteering at an equine therapy centre on the outskirts of Porto. The project is designed to help people facing physical and mental challenges. Mornings are spent helping out with a variety of tasks, from assisting with therapy sessions to patrolling local forests on horseback to assess fire risks, tending the vegetable garden and caring for the horses, as well as the farm's goats and pigs. Afternoons are free for volunteers to explore the cobbled streets, cafes and river cruises of Portugal's second city. From £1,095 for six days (additional weeks cost £400) including meals, dorm accommodation (private rooms an extra £50 a night), year-round, Guests staying at the 150-year-old converted barns on this farm, in the Madonie mountains on Sicily's north coast, are as much a part of the family as the horses grazing the surrounding paddocks. The host leads daily morning trails for competent riders on well-behaved warmbloods and Sicilian crossbreeds. One route includes a ride to his friend's house for a slap-up lunch. Afternoons are for walking tours of the beautiful town of Cefalù or surrounding medieval hills towns, dinners are in traditional restaurants. And, with year-round village feasts, fairs, and shows, there's plenty to do here for non-riders too. From £930 for five nights including full board, riding and sightseeing excursions, year round,
