Joséphine Baker was never just the woman with the banana skirt. She was a shockwave. Bursting onto the Paris scene of the 1920s, she carved herself into the collective imagination with a body in excessive motion, both fetishized and fiercely independent. Born on the streets of St. Louis, her art came from survival, improvisation, and jazz. Renaissance! Europe wanted “the jungle”, Baker brought the street, turning exoticization into both a weapon and a disguise. Her image, between nudity and animality, fed colonial fantasies, yet she constantly sabotaged them through exaggeration, grimace and refusal of stillness. Program showing full filmography, spiced up by a selection of newsreels from Gaumont Pathé archives and rarities.

Curated by Emilie Cauquy. In collaboration with La Cinémathèque française and CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée

La Revue des revues (Parisian Pleasures, 1927) d. Joe Francis, Alex Nalpas • La Sirène des tropiques (La sirena dei tropici, 1927) d. Henri Étiévant, Mario Nalpas con l’assistenza di Luis Buñuel • Zouzou (1934) d. Marc Allégret • Princesse Tam Tam (La principessa Tam Tam, 1934) d. Edmond T. Gréville • Fausse Alerte (1940) d. Jacques de Baroncelli