FILM REVIEW: ‘PÉPÉ’ PORTRAYS A COLOMBIAN ‘OUTSIDER’

By Dimitri Keramitas

One of the strangest cases of invasive species appeared a number of years ago in Colombia. The notorious narco lord Pablo Escobar - a man worth billions - decided to create a private animal sanctuary and imported, among other fauna, a number of hippopotami. The sanctuary went to seed after Escobar was killed by law enforcement officers, but the hippos remained - and multiplied, disturbing the environment. 

Pépé, a film by Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias - winner of the Golden Bear for Best Direction at 2024’s Berlinale - recounts the story of one such hippo as a surreal fable. The movie resembles certain films of Werner Herzog, with its combination of documentary footage and metaphysical fiction, but the director isn’t always in control of his form. Neither is he always in control of his metaphysics. 

The story of Pépé begins in Namibia, southern Africa. We follow a group of German tourists being bused into the wild to see the animals, led by a German (or perhaps Afrikaner) guide. There’s amusing satire in the discrepancy between the guide’s account of hippos’ ways and the “superstitions” of his African assistant.

The shots of the landscape are powerful, but even more so is the depiction of the hippopotamus. We all have a cartoon image of a goofy animal (like the TV images of a cartoon hippo the filmmaker sometimes shows us), as opposed to the rhino with the pointy horn and the elephant with his tusks. But the hippo is also an intimidating beast with a massive size and thick leathery hide. 

In fact, the hippo is one of the wild’s most dangerous animals when riled. It can charge at high speed, and though it likes to lounge in the water, it can also move there with great rapidity. We don’t see precisely how Pépé was captured, but there are darkly comical scenes of two flunkies transporting it through the Colombian hinterlands in a rickety truck (they don’t really know what their cargo is). The animal almost causes the truck to tumble over, but the men manage to bring it to its watery destination. 

The scenes of Pépé, first in Africa, then in Colombia, are strikingly vivid, and sometimes verge on a mystical vision of nature, the images saturated with colour.

The hippo seems like a waterlogged tree in the river, a living boulder on land. Its nature is utterly inscrutable, at least until it goes into action against anyone disturbing its space. An exception are the birds that hop onto its hide to peck at the insects which are an irritation for him but sustenance for them. 

The nature footage, whether of Pépé or the environment enveloping him, are the best parts of the film. The voice-over purporting to express the hippo’s thoughts seems, with a few exceptions, too philosophical and, especially, anthropocentric. It doesn’t help that sometimes the voice-over is in Spanish, sometimes in another language. The noises that the hippo makes on occasion (which appear to be the filmmaker’s invention) are more expressive of his elemental strangeness. 

For the viewer, the Colombian landscape seems just as “natural” as that of southern Africa, and even more tropical. However, they are of course not the same, and the difference acts upon the nature of the hippos. Animals that lived together in natural harmony begin to have conflicts, and after a falling-out with one dominant hippo, Pépé migrates to a different area. 

Pépé’s travels don’t always seem clear, although this may be meant to evoke the hippo’s furtive movement in the water, his muzzle barely above the surface. The specifics of migration can seem mysterious, and Pépé is kind of lost. That doesn’t make it easy for the viewer. The director compensates by showing images of maps of the screen, but they don’t clarify the hippo’s path, and the territories highlighted aren’t familiar. Worse, the maps seem jarringly artificial compared to the immediacy of the shots of Pépé. 

The film recalls Robert Bresson’s great work Au Hasard Balthazar, which was about an errant donkey. That particular animal was an obvious Christian symbol, accentuated by its encounters with a gallery of mostly negative characters and a tragic end. The human characters in Pépé are also mostly nasty or stupid, but the hippo’s own character isn’t pressed through an overtly Christian cookie-cutter. Pépé is an Other, whose strangeness is intended to be unknowable. In the film’s vision of naturalistic alienation we are all Others, subsumed to elemental violence, yet even on this level, the film could have done with more dramatization. 

It’s when Pépé approaches a remote river village that the film comes to life. Candelario (Jorge Puntillon Garcia), an elderly villager, encounters the hippo on the river, and this changes his life in a strange way. It results in a breakdown of relations with his wife (an irascible type to begin with). As other villagers experience close encounters with the hippo, they come into conflict with the Inspector in charge of local order. He rejects their repeated solicitations, which frays the social fabric. 

Some surreal touches take the film’s naturalism into odd directions. Candelario leaves behind his fellow villagers, and his wife, to row his boat in the vicinity of the hippo. He knows it’s dangerous, but something attracts him. A different attraction principle attaches to a beauty contest featuring young village women who give the judges accounts of their exalted ambitions (one wants to become a scientist, another a journalist). The contest culminates in the women floating down the river on gaudily flower-laden rafts. They aren’t harmed by the huge animal in the river, so there does seem to be something beyond “nature red in tooth and claw”. 

The initial footage of Pépé and the dramatic scenes are the most effective parts of the film. The arty bits - the recurrent motif of soldiers on an operation, TV cartoon shots, occasional screen black-outs, the voice-overs - drive home the fact that the director isn’t a conventional hack of a filmmaker. Arias, who’s from the Dominican Republic, has a background in experimental film and studied in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Edinburgh, and Los Angeles.  Still, these techniques are distractions, venal sins committed by a filmmaker who hasn’t fully digested his technique, or his content. 

That content includes social and political context. Arias’ treatment of Colombian reality can be seen as a series of deft touches: the absurdity of the men transporting Pépé, the village Inspector, the beauty contest. They bring to mind the Colombia of Garcia Marquez (the film as a whole is like a Marquezian fable). However, the civil war between the government and FARC guerrillas, the bloody reign of the narco lords, America’s DEA interventionism, seem to have been extracted from the film’s universe like a painful molar. Even the killing of Escobar is presented as something of a natural occurrence, devoid of context. 

Pépé is an ambitious Dominican-French-German-Namibian co-production. Likewise, no less than four actors of different nationalities took turns voicing the hippo’s thoughts. But while the film succeeds in attaining complexity, it’s at the expense of its Colombian core.

Despite its flaws, the brilliant sequences redeem Pépé as a film, however. And as a fable it powerfully depicts the consequences of the disturbances currently being visited upon nature. The creatures displaced by these disturbances can be as small as birds (carrying a virus) or as large as a hippo, but the ultimate blame doesn’t lie with them. To paraphrase cartoonist Walt Kelly’s Pogo, “We have met the invasive species, and he is us.”  

Pépé hits French theatre screens in January 2025. Photos courtesy of the film distributors.

JAMES BALDWIN FEST TO CELEBRATE WRITER, IN PARIS

For the centenary of James Baldwin’s birth, an international array of literature fans are coming together in Paris at a festival that will honour the life and work of the iconic American author and civil rights activist.

The James Baldwin Centennial Festival, scheduled for Sept. 9 to 13, aims to be a “celebration” that will take place at multiple venues in the French capital, according to Tara Phillips, executive director of La Maison Baldwin, the organizers.

The non-profit group (founded in 2016 in Saint Paul de Vence, where Baldwin spent the last 17 years of his life) essentially wishes to preserve and promote the writer’s legacy by “nurturing creativity, fostering intellectual exchange, and championing diverse voices through conferences and residencies,” according to its stated objectives.

In the eight years since it was formed, however, La Maison Baldwin hasn’t always had smooth sailing, as some of its activities ran counter to the vision of Baldwin’s family on how to honour his uncompromising work and long-lasting influence. But now, with new direction, the organization has the family’s support, including for the festival, Phillips says.

Baldwin - the author of stirring books such as The Fire Next Time, Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room - remains one of the most revered (and quoted) writers today, decades after his death in 1987. Born on Aug. 2, 1924, he would have turned 100 this year, and the festival might have been held in his birth month were it not for the recent Paris Olympic Games.

According to Phillips, the event will comprise panel discussions, writing workshops, an art exhibition, student participation and an open-mic segment, among the various features.

In the following edited interview, conducted in person in Paris, Phillips discusses the overall goals and the far-reaching power of Baldwin’s works and words.

SWAN: Let’s start with the centenary and why this festival, why it’s taking place in France.

Tara Phillips: La Maison Baldwin was founded in the south of France, and it was intended to provide both writers’ residencies and writers’ conferences. Then the founder moved to Paris in 2022 and left the organization. So, the centennial seems like the perfect opportunity to reclaim the organization and reintroduce it on new footing. 

And so that’s why we thought it was important to do a centennial event, and we also wanted to be aligned with the family who had already been thinking about the centennial in early 2023. We were trying to build a relationship with them, and it just made sense that we were all thinking about this as a way to collectively honour his legacy.

(Note: Baldwin’s family held a centennial celebration at the Lincoln Center in New York on Aug. 7, at which Phillips spoke.)

SWAN: How will the family be involved in the Paris festival?

TP: Well, on the first day, there’s a welcoming reception, and I will invite Trevor Baldwin, James Baldwin’s nephew, to say a few words. But then on the following day, we’ll have the very first panel, called “La Maison Baldwin”, and it’s about the idea of home, both literally and also as in the Black literary tradition. Trevor will participate on that panel as somebody who knew his Uncle Jimmy, and can give some insight into the idea of home for James Baldwin. He was a Harlem man, but he lived all over the world, and his idea of home is pretty complex. And what I’m discovering as I get to know more and more members of the family is that a lot of them have this wanderlust and live in different parts of the world. So, that will be a way to engage a familial voice on that issue, particularly for Black people.

SWAN: Is the festival open to the general public?

TP: There’s a festival fee, but anybody can attend. James Baldwin’s followers and admirers are so diverse: you have the Black community, the literary community, the activist community, the LGBTQ+ community, you have students, academics, artists. The idea was to create an experience that would appeal to all those types of people, but always with the idea of centering James Baldwin.

SWAN: What are some of the other aspects of the event?

TP: We’ll have a welcome reception, and that’s going to be sponsored by the US Embassy. It will be just a moment to come together and celebrate the fact that we’re in Paris and to kick things off. Then we will start the next day with a keynote speaker (author Robert Jones, Jr.) and multiple panel discussions where we’ll be thinking about Baldwin and reflecting on the theme of the festival: Baldwin and Black Legacy, Truth, Liberation, Activism.

SWAN: How did the theme come about?

TP: It came about as the centennial committee brainstormed words that came to mind when we thought about Baldwin and his work and his impact. You know, he spoke truth, also in his writing. And for many people, it liberated them. He gave us the language to liberate us from conceptions of ourselves, or our perceptions of the world, and perceptions of our humanity. And that liberation motivates activism for many of us. That’s how we came to that theme.

SWAN: And continuing with the various elements of the festival, there will be an art exhibition?

TP: Yes, we’ll have an exhibition that will be running during the week. It's called Frontline Prophet. Those works are by Sabrina Nelson, curated by Ashara Ekundayo and Omo Misha. It’s this brilliant collection of art sketches that Sabrina initially did in 2016 at the James Baldwin conference (held at the American University of Paris), and it’s returning, coming full circle.

SWAN: The festival will also have writing workshops (for an additional fee). Please tell us about those.

TP: We will have a fiction track and a creative nonfiction track. These are separate as not all festival participants will be joining. 

But if you’re a writer and you want to have a curated experience with some successful writers, we have Deesha Philyaw (author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies) doing the fiction workshop, and Brian Broome (author of the memoir Punch Me Up to the Gods) is doing the creative nonfiction. And that will be happening for folks who want to have that experience.

SWAN: In addition, there’s a big move to engage students, youth…

TP: Yes, there will be a student activism workshop. We want to engage young people with Baldwin’s work and tap into their own sense of activism. You know, these are such interesting times to be young, right? There have always been things happening in history, in our world, but because of social media, because we have access to see everything all the time, I think young people are engaged in a a very different way than they probably would have been without these mediums. And they’ve been the ones to kind of reinvigorate Baldwin’s language and works in a lot of ways.

So, we wanted to give them a space where they could explore the idea of activism through leadership, through creativity and through community. For those three days, they will have their own space together to look at some of Baldwin’s works, to engage with each other and talk with each other. We’re partnering with the Collectif Baldwin (a local organization) on that. I actually think this is the most important part of the festival.

SWAN: Where will the students be coming from?

TP: We basically would like to see students from everywhere who have the time or interest to attend. But we also think it’s very important that there’s a presence of French students as well because what I’m discovering, particularly as a I make more connections here in Paris, is that there is so much to be learned from Baldwin in the context of France and their relations around racism and cultural identity. So, to be able to engage French students in this conversation would be to discuss their own activism. After the workshop, they will also do a presentation - on what they learned and on how they can take Baldwin into the future.

SWAN: Let’s talk about your background coming into this. What is your personal relationship with Baldwin’s work?

TP: It’s interesting because I don’t remember the first time I ever really read James Baldwin. I know I don’t remember reading him when I was in high school - I remember reading Richard Wright and Lorraine Hansberry. But I was in high school in the Eighties before there really was an infusion of black literature, so it was hard to come by. 

Then, I ended up reading The Evidence of Things Not Seen, which was interesting to read because it wasn’t the ones he’s known for. It was about the Atlanta Child Murders, which were happening around the same time that I was a kid. There’s something about being immersed in that specific topic and getting it from his perspective that was really interesting for me.

Then he would pop up in my psyche over the years, and now he kind of haunts me because I’m constantly doing this work. And the connection for me, with respect to taking on this work, is that I have moved to Paris as a Black American (in 2018), and I started writing then, and I could just really connect to his sense of freedom coming here. I mean, being in the United States as a Black American and then also as the mother of a Black son, there’s just a weight that you carry, and people who don’t have our experience, they don’t understand what it’s like, and they don’t understand how persistent it is: how you can try to live a life of joy, and of peace, and of intellectual curiosity and all of these things as a Black American, but there’s always a moment when you’re kind of smacked back to the reality of, like, our positioning in society and our history. His words became so important to me, especially after George Floyd’s murder. Baldwin just understood. He had the language.

Another connection for me, and I’ve written about this, is that my father’s name is James and my father was born in Harlem and grew up there, like Baldwin. Turns out that they both went to the same high school but 20 years apart. I think about my dad’s connection to Harlem, his Harlem pride, and how he left because things got so bad in the Sixties and Seventies. He moved my whole family out because he wanted something better for us. And in some ways, I feel that that was James Baldwin’s understanding: another black Jimmy from Harlem saying: “I’ve got to get out of here if I’m going to be true to my own humanity and live the life that I need to live.”

SWAN: In light of all this, what are your hopes for the festival overall?

TP: My hopes for the festival are that it’s really seen and viewed as a celebration of James Baldwin. That’s why I’ve been really keen on calling it a “festival” and not a “conference” because a conference tends to suggest an academic event, with people sitting and providing an analysis of his work, and what I’m hoping is: let’s just celebrate Uncle Jimmy and what he has given us.

Let it just be a party of writers and artists and creatives and scholars, just experiencing one another and Paris, and why this place was important for him and his own experience and development as a human. And let’s just celebrate young people, and their potential and their possibilities, which I think Baldwin really cared about. He had a word for everybody, you know. And it’s funny because Duke University Press has donated 300 copies of Little Man, Little Man, which Baldwin wrote for his nephew, and I love that this is a children’s book… this is what it’s really about - passing on the word for another generation. - AM / SWAN

Photos (top to bottom): A 2016 sketch of James Baldwin by artist Sabrina Nelson; Tara Phillips in Paris (photo by AM/SWAN); the cover of an early edition of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (Dell Publishing); Deesha Philyaw (photo courtesy of the festival); the cover of The Evidence of Things Not Seen (Macmillan Publishers); the cover of Little Man, Little Man (Duke University Press).

For more info: https://www.lamaisonbaldwin.org/centennial

AT PARIS OLYMPICS, ART RUNS IN TANDEM WITH SPORTS

As cheers from beach-volleyball fans fill the air at the Eiffel Tower Stadium on a steamy, sunny day, pedestrians just down the road are enjoying another kind of show: an outdoor exhibition of huge photographs gleaming on the metal railings of UNESCO headquarters.

Titled Cultures at the Games, the exhibition is among hundreds of artistic and cultural events taking place across France during the 2024 Olympic Games (hosted by the French capital July 26 to Aug. 11), and they’re being staged alongside the numerous athletic contests.

The events even have an umbrella name – the Cultural Olympiad – and include photography, painting, sculpture, fashion, and a host of attractions linking art and sport. Most are scheduled to run beyond the closing ceremony of the Games.

UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is a “partner” in the Cultural Olympiad, arranging not only the usual meetings where bureaucrats give lofty speeches, but also showcasing a series of works to highlight diversity and inclusion.

Cultures at the Games, for instance, comprises some 140 photographs portraying memorable aspects of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics since 1924 and is presented in association with the Olympic Museum of Lausanne.

Images show how national delegations have transmitted their culture during these extravaganzas, and the pictures depict athletes such as Jamaica’s Usain Bolt, whose “lightning bolt” pose has become part of the Games’ folklore even as he has helped to make the green, gold and black colours of his country’s flag more recognizable.

Inside UNESCO’s Y-shaped building, meanwhile, a collection of panels focuses on how sport can “Change the Game”, a theme running across all of the organization’s “Olympiad” events. (At the “World Ministerial Meeting” that UNESCO hosted on July 24, just ahead of the Olympics, officials discussed gender equality, inclusion of people with disabilities, and protection of athletes, for example.)

A notable section of the indoor exhibition features historic photographs that pay tribute to athletes who sparked change through their achievements or activism. Here, one can view an iconic picture of American athlete Jesse Owens, the “spanner in the works that completely disrupted the Nazi propaganda machine set up during the 1936 Berlin Olympics,” according to the curators.

Owens won four medals at the Games, but “received no immediate (official) recognition from his own country” despite being welcomed as a hero by the public, as the exhibition notes. The racism in the United States meant that President Franklyn D. Roosevelt refused to congratulate him “for fear of losing votes in the Southern states.” The photo shows him standing on the podium in Berlin, while behind him another competitor gives a “Hitler salute”.

Athletes who changed the world equally features boxer Mohammad Ali, who in 1967 refused to fight in Vietnam and was stripped of his world championship title and banned from the ring for three years.

Perhaps the most famous image, however, is that of athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 games in Mexico City. They “removed their shoes and walked forward in socks to protest against the extreme poverty faced by African Americans,” as the caption reminds viewers. “With solemn faces, Smith and Carlos bowed their heads and raised their gloved black fists, aiming to raise global awareness about racial segregation in their country.”

The exhibition outlines the long battles faced by women athletes as well, and it highlights the work of Alice Milliat who, as president of the French Women’s Sports Federation, “campaigned for women’s inclusion in Olympic sports”. She organized the first Women’s Olympic Games in Paris in 1922, bringing together five countries and 77 athletes.

Although Milliat “died in obscurity” in 1957, her “legacy endures today, with the Paris 2024 Games highlighting gender equality in sports, largely thanks to her visionary efforts,” says the photo caption.

Similarly, the exhibition spotlights the contributions of disabled athletes such as Ryadh Sallem, who was born without arms or legs, a victim of the Thalidomide medication that was prescribed to pregnant women in the 1950s and Sixties and caused deformities in children.

Sallem won 15 French championship titles in swimming and later turned to team sports such as wheelchair basketball and rugby. At UNESCO, his photograph is prominently displayed, along with the story of his hopes for the 2024 Paralympics and his mission to “promote a positive vision of disability”.

Elsewhere in the city, artists and museums are also paying tribute to Paralympic competitors, ahead of the Paralympic Games from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8 in Paris.

On the fencing around the imposing Gare de l’Est (train station), colourful works by artist Lorenzo Mattotti show disabled athletes competing in a variety of sports, while the Panthéon is presenting the “Paralympic Stories: From Sporting Integration to Social Inclusion (1948-2024)”. This exposition relates the “history of Paralympism and the challenges of equality,” according to curators Anne Marcellini and Sylvain Ferez.

For fans of sculpture, Paris has a range of “Olympiad” works on view for free. In June, the city unveiled its official “sculpture olympique” or Olympic Statue, created by Los Angeles-based African-American artist Alison Saar, who cites inspiration from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

The sculpture, located near the famed Champs Elysées avenue, depicts a seated African woman holding a flame in front of the Olympic rings, and it “embodies Olympic values of inclusivity and peace,” according to the office of Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo.

When it was inaugurated on June 23, however, it sparked a flurry of hostile remarks from some far-right commentators on social media, who apparently felt threatened by the work.

Another statue of a woman, that of Venus de Milo or the mythical goddess Aphrodite, has been “reinterpreted” in six versions by artistic director Laurent Perbos to symbolise “feminine” sporting disciplines, including boxing, archery and surfing. The statues stand in front of the National Assembly, and the irony won’t be lost on most viewers: French women secured the right to vote only in 1944.

Of course, Paris wouldn’t be Paris without another particular artform. As the much-discussed Opening Ceremony of the Olympics showed, fashion is an integral part of these Games, and those who didn’t get enough of the array of sometimes questionable costumes can head for another dose with “La Mode en movement #2” (Fashion in Motion #2).

This exhibition at the Palais Galliera / Fashion Museum looks at the history of sports clothing from the 18^th century, with a special focus on beachwear. Among the 250 pieces on display, viewers will surely gain tips on what to wear for beach volleyball.

Photos (top to bottom): cover of the Cultural Olympiad programme; a photo of Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics, in Athletes who changed the world at UNESCO; an image of Tommie Smith in the same exhibition; artwork by Lorenzo Mattoti at Gare de l'Est, photo by AM/SWAN; artist Alison Saar with her Olympic Sculpture, photo courtesy of the City of Paris.

For more information, see: Olympiade Culturelle (paris2024.org)

A MISSION TO PUBLISH, TRANSLATE PUERTO RICAN POETS

On meeting Amanda Hernández, one is immediately struck by her infectious energy and her generous sharing of information about Puerto Rican writers and books. At a recent literary festival in the Caribbean - the BVI Lit Fest in the British Virgin Islands - she urged participants for instance to check out the works of several emerging authors from her home territory.

A poet and publisher, Hernández is carving out a place not just for Puerto Rican poetry but also for independent publishing on the island, producing attractive volumes through specialist methods. 

She and fellow poet Nicole Cecilia Delgado run La Impresora, which they describe as an “artist-led studio dedicated to small-scale editorial work and allocating resources to support independent publishing.”

Based in the north-western Puerto Rican town Isabela, La Impresora specializes in Risograph printing, a mechanized technique that is also referred to as digital screen printing. Risograph uses “environmentally friendly” paper, ink and other materials, and is becoming increasingly popular among independent graphic artists and publishers worldwide. Along with this, Hernández and Delgado state that one of their main objectives is the “learning, use and improvement of traditional publishing, printing, and hand-made book-binding techniques.”

Another important objective is the translation of poetry and other genres by Puerto Rican writers, especially underrepresented authors. Such translations are published in bilingual, handcrafted books, as La Impresora seeks to “strengthen the link between literature and the visual arts”, and to reach readers both within and beyond Puerto Rico, the directors say.

“Our poetry reflects on our shared context of resisting injustices and finding new ways of creating revolutionary practices and dynamics, battling the austerity measures and violence imposed upon us,” Hernández and Delgado declare on La Impresora’s website.

Regarding language, the poets say that this is essential “when creating content and thinking about accessibility, distribution, outreach, and possible networks.” Although they have mostly edited and published Spanish literature written by Puerto Rican authors from the island and the diaspora, they have been “integrating more bilingual (Spanish/English) publications” and translation projects.

“We acknowledge that English is not our mother tongue and represents complicated colonial power relationships in Puerto Rican history. However, we also know it works as a lingua franca that allows for communicating with people from all over the globe, enabling alliances and collaborations,” they explain.

Hernández expands on different aspects of the poets’ work in the following interview, conducted by fellow writer and editor Alecia McKenzie, SWAN’s founder. The discussion forms part of an on-going series about translators of Caribbean literature and is done in collaboration with the Caribbean Translation Project, which has been highlighting the translation of writing from and about the region since 2017.

SWAN: How important is translation for your mission of editing and producing “contemporary literature in Puerto Rico, with particular emphasis on Puerto Rican poetry written by underrepresented authors”?

Amanda Hernández: We recognize the importance of translation as an overall way of tending to accessibility; reinforcing the distribution of our titles outside of Spanish-speaking countries; as a means of establishing new collaborations and possible co-editions, and as a way of growing our network of readers and collaborators. We started publishing mostly in Spanish, and we still do, but we’ve been acknowledging how translation projects (Spanish/English) have helped us widen our scope as an independent editorial project, throughout and outside of the Caribbean, at the same time helping us carry out our mission of publishing and sharing the work of contemporary Puerto Rican underrepresented authors. 

SWAN: You’ve stated that “language is essential when creating content and thinking about accessibility, distribution, outreach, and possible networks.” But you acknowledge that English is not your mother tongue and “represents complicated colonial power relationships in Puerto Rican history”. Can you tell us how you navigate these issues when La Impresora publishes bilingual / translated work? 

AH: The nature of our written and graphic content, the poetry we publish, the artists, writers, and projects with whom we collaborate, including our personal views, politics, and editorial methodology, are based upon alternative and subversive practices that challenge precisely these complicated colonial power relationships that have forcefully tried to shape our Puerto Rican history and literature. We decide to use the colonizing language as a weapon, as a vehicle to suggest new and politically committed ways of writing, publishing, and thinking about our context and geography.

SWAN: You both speak several languages, including Spanish and English. Where and how did you begin learning languages?

AH: We are both fully bilingual (Spanish and English). In Puerto Rico, currently, the education system teaches English as a second language. It started in 1898, when we became a colony of the U.S. territory, having been a Spanish (Spain) colony before that since 1493. During the 1900s, English was forced upon the Puerto Rican education system in an attempt to assimilate the population, but failed to be stated as the primary language. In 1949 Spanish was again reinstated as the official speaking and learning language all through primary and secondary school, and English became a “preferred subject” that has been officially taught in schools until the present time. So, we both grew up learning to read and write in English in school, also through television and movies.

SWAN: How did your interest in translation begin?

AH: My interest in translation has developed alongside my desire to work on and publish my poetry, and the poetry of other writers and colleagues. The possibility of being able to participate in a broader network of readers, writers, publishers, literary festivals, and so on, has proved to be a gratifying and important formative experience. Recognizing the value of translation as a practice that considers the importance of broadening the scope and circulation of the literature and books we create has been a realization I have assumed both as a poet and editor.

SWAN: You’ve translated and published works by several writers. Can you tell us about the particular challenges of bilingual publishing?

AH: We have published translations of our work, either translated by us or by other colleague writers. In some cases, we’ve worked with and published writers who also self-translate their work, like the Puerto Rican poets Ana Portnoy Brimmer and Roque Raquel Salas Rivera. We greatly admire their work.

We’ve also published bilingüal broadsides including poetry from the Cuban writer Jamila Medina and the Puerto Rican poet Aurora Levins Morales, alongside others. One of the first bilingüal projects we worked on (2018) was a reedition of a book by the Peruvian poet José Cerna Bazán titled Ruda, originally published in Spanish in 2002. Our edition included a translation and notes made by the North American Hispanic Studies professor Anne Lambright. This project was funded by Trinity College, Connecticut. More recently we published Calima, by the Puerto Rican literary critic and professor Luis Othoniel Rosa. This bilingüal publication includes two experimental historic-science-fiction narratives, an interactive graphic intervention by the Puerto Rican artist Guillermo Rodríguez, and was translated to English by Katie Marya and Martina Barinova.

Some of the challenges we’ve faced working with bilingüal publishing, aside from the aforementioned complicated relationship we Puerto Ricans have with the English language, have had to do, mostly, with our approach to design and with the complexity that comes with poetry translation. Poetry requires the translator, and editor, to pay attention to many more details aside from the literal meaning of the written word. There is also what is suggested but not literally stated, idioms, the flow and rhythm of the poem, the versification, its metric structure, tone and style, and these all have to be simultaneously translated.

Regarding the design of bilingüal poetry publications, finding new and well-thought-out ways of addressing format, aesthetics and the overall reading experience and fluidity of the books we publish has given us the chance to experiment and challenge our editorial approach. We don’t have a standardized composition and/or design for the books we publish, so each one involves an original conceptualization process that takes into account the weight of their content in relation to their physical materialization.

SWAN: How important is translation for today’s world, especially for underrepresented communities?

AH: As publishers we mostly work on the editing, designing, printing, and distribution of contemporary Puerto Rican poetry, focusing on content that represents our true motivations, struggles, and rights as Puerto Ricans. We recognize the power and autonomy poetry provides as a shared practice and cultural legacy, as a way of reflecting upon and passing down to younger generations a critical and compromised poetic that intends a genuine portrayal of the underrepresented history of our archipelago. Translation becomes a way of widening our reach and sharing our true experiences as Caribbean islanders with the world.

SWAN: In the Caribbean, as in other regions, it sometimes feels as if countries are divided by language. How can people in the literary / arts / educational spheres help to bridge these linguistic "borders"?

AH: Including translation practices in the work we do and publish as a Caribbean community is a great step towards bridging these linguistic gaps or borders. Publishing bilingüal editions; including interpreters in the work we do and the events we organize, not only for the written or spoken language, but also considering sign language and braille; allocating resources intended for the discussion, research, and workshopping of translation as a way of strengthening our creative networks are achievable ways of connecting the geographically disperse and linguistically diverse Caribbean we live in.

SWAN: How do you see literary translation evolving to reach more readers?

AH: New technologies and editorial practices are constantly reshaping our views and the ways in which we circulate our content and share our literary resources with a worldwide network of readers and writers. The possibility of developing new readers, writers and literary communities and coalitions gains strength as we consider the importance of accessibility, representation and circulation. Translation is a key factor to consider when assuming strategies to achieve these goals.

SWAN: La Impresora combines graphic art, handicraft, poetry, and translation in its overall production. Can you tell us more about the significance of this combination?

AH: Our practice revolves around the sharing and learning of skills that combine poetry, graphic art, book art, translating, editing, editorial design and risograph printing. We edit, design, print, bind by hand and distribute the books La Impresora publishes. This combination of practices helps us sustain an autonomous and independent operation where we can envision, decide upon and construct the type of books we enjoy and the content we consider relevant in our Puerto Rican context. The artisanal approach to our publications is of great significance to the work we do, since all of the content we publish is handmade, and we celebrate the ways in which this has shaped the relationship we have with independent editorial work. 

SWAN: What are your next projects?

AH: Regarding bilingüal and/or translation projects, we just recently printed and published La Medalla / The medal by Marion Bolander, under a grant awarded by the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) and the Fondo Flamboyán para las Artes. Bolander is a Vietnam veteran and this book includes poems written by him during his time in service, poems written later on in his life and a compelling interview that contextualizes the author's relationship to military service, the United States, Puerto Rico and to poetry.

We have been working with the poet and self-translator Urayoán Noel on the publication of his next book titled Cuaderno de Isabela / Isabela Notebook, which includes texts written by the poet during his visits to our workshop in the coastal town of Isabela, in the span of three consecutive years, as part of a residency program for writers we recently established.

We are also starting to work on two publications by Central American women poets. In collaboration with the curator Vanessa Hernández, who runs a local art gallery called El Lobi, we invited the Guatemalan poet Rosa Chávez to Puerto Rico as part of a collaborative residency program between El Lobi and La Impresora. The possibility of a bilingüal poetry publication is currently being discussed regarding her residency and visit. The Salvadoran poet Elena Salamanca will also be visiting us in Puerto Rico, accompanied by her translator, the North American independent publisher Ryan Greene, and we will be working on the publication of a bilingüal edition of her latest book Incognita Flora Cuscatlanica.

SWAN: the Decade of Indigenous Languages began in 2022, launched by UNESCO. What does this mean to translators?

AH: The mobilization and resource allocation, regarding preserving and circulating the work of black, brown, and indigenous people, writers, and artists is long overdue. The role native languages have played in our development as artistic, cultural, and political civilizations is beyond question, and this recent recognition could be seen as an opportunity to honor their worldwide importance. There is still a long way to go in the search for reparations and equal opportunities for BIPOC communities at a global scale, and concerning translators, this provides an opportunity for the consideration and visibility of translation projects that uphold these standards. – AM / SWAN

Photos (top to bottom): Amanda Hernández and Nicole Cecilia Delgado, co-directors of La Impresora; display at a local art and book fair in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico; working on Risograph printing; producing Las horas extra by writer Mara Pastor; poets and visitors at the Feria de Libros Independientes y Alternativos (photo by Anita Rojas); Amanda Hernández during a poetry reading at the 2023 BVI Lit Fest (photo by AM/SWAN; all other photos courtesy of La Impresora).

Follow the Caribbean Translation Project on X: @CaribTranslate.

IMPRESSIONIST FESTIVAL TAPS INTO GLOBAL CONCERNS

On a clear, chilly evening this week, the words of African American poet Maya Angelou filled the air in the centre of Rouen, as a vivid light show played across the façade of the French town’s imposing cathedral, and as a bright full moon rose in the sky.

Images of explosions, falling debris, a cheetah fleeing in the darkness – all sent a message that the world is in a precarious situation on many fronts and that urgent restorative action is needed.

Yet, along with the tangible sense of angst, the show seemed to call for hope, with the intoning of Angelou’s famous line: “But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

The 25-minute projection, by Texas-born experimental theatre artist Robert Wilson, forms part of the massive Normandie Impressionniste festival, now in its 5^th incarnation and this year celebrating the 150^th anniversary of impressionism, the art movement that scandalized critics when it emerged in the late 1800s.

Running until Sept. 22, and with a head-spinning 150 events taking place throughout Normandy - the region most closely associated with famous impressionist artists such as Claude Monet - the festival comprises exhibitions, installations, theatre pieces, concerts, and other shows.

It features both renowned and emerging artists, from across France as well as from countries including India, Japan, China, South Africa, the United States and Britain … all “in dialogue” with impressionism, and history, according to festival director Philippe Platel.

“We wish to show what’s happening now, to update the view of art, even as Normandy remains central,” Platel said in an interview.

The 1874 Paris exhibition that sparked the term impressionism (from the Monet painting Impression, soleil levant) was met mostly with disdain as conventional painters and critics opposed the breaking of academic rules. But the movement, with its focus on a different way of seeing and capturing light, would go on to have global impact.

Still, while the impressionists were seen as radicals, their first shows featured just one woman artist, Berthe Morisot. Now, the festival has made it a point to include almost as many contemporary women artists (47 percent) as men, said Platel - although it’s clear that the “blockbuster” exhibitions centre on male painters.

The Wilson / Angelou show, titled Star and Stone: a kind of love…some say” is presented as one of the highlights of the festival, and Platel emphasises that Angelou (who died in 2014) was an “immense feminist poet”.

Her words are transmitted in the original English and in French translation (read by French actress Isabelle Huppert), alongside music by composer Philip Glass. (Wilson and Glass have previously collaborated, most notably for the opera Einstein on the Beach.)

With its moving, intense images, Star and Stone evokes historical atrocities, including slavery and two world wars. It recalls the damage inflicted on Normandy during World War II, but it also reflects current brutal conflicts. (During the projection on May 22, a woman strode past, and, obviously angered by the visuals, or mistaking the show for a demonstration, shouted out the word “anti-Semitic” several times, to the apparent bafflement of spectators.)

Some of the projected scenes, especially against the full-moon backdrop on this particular night, conjured Monet’s iconic paintings of the Rouen Cathedral, works that themselves hang in an exhibition opening May 25 in Le Havre.

The harbour town, which saw entire neighbourhoods flattened in World War II bombardments, has over the past decades embarked on a cultural and architectural renaissance, and it hosts an impressive museum of modern art (MuMa) which is showcasing 19^th-century photography in Normandy, as part of the festival.

Photographier en Normandie: 1840-1890 juxtaposes photographs and impressionist paintings, giving an idea of the medium’s development and the concerns of artists at the time: the rapidly changing landscapes caused by the industrial revolution, for instance.

It pulls together several iconic paintings of landmarks and the sea, while the photographs too capture marine scenes, daily life, and environmental transformations brought on by the building of railway lines during the 19^th century. The show caters to both painting and photography buffs, or anyone interested in early picture-taking processes and their global impact, not least on artists.

Back in Rouen, another highlight of the festival is an exhibition by 86-year-old English artist David Hockney, who has been living and working in Normandy since the Covid-19 pandemic. His show Normandism at Rouen’s Musée des Beaux-Arts offers a different kind of impressionism, mixing pop art with the quality of light so important to his predecessors.

Here, vibrant greens, yellows and blues pull spectators into the landscapes for which rainy Normandy is famous, and the exhibition also features striking portraits as well as paintings that Hockney has created via iPads.

The latter record his individual technique and take viewers on a journey from the first line traced to the colourful completed work.

In the “dialogue” between contemporary artists and the impressionists, a main theme is water - the sea, ponds, rain - with echoes of climate change. In one standout show, Oliver Beer, a British painter and musician, reinterprets Monet’s famous Water Lilies series, transforming soundwaves into visual depiction on huge azure canvases.

In another, renowned French artist Marc Desgrandchamps incorporates human forms into his portrayal of water and landscapes, suggesting fragility as well as the need for environmental protection.

While these artists have consciously accepted the call to use impressionism in their shows, the impressionists themselves drew from others, especially from Japanese artists, whose work Monet collected. The festival highlights these international links with an exhibition set to begin June 22 in Deauville: Mondes flottants: du japonisme à l’art contemporain / Floating Worlds: from “Japonism” to Contemporary Art.

Meanwhile, Tokyo-born, France-based artist Reiji Hiramatsu will hold a solo show, Symphonie des Nymphéas / Water Lilies Symphony in Giverny, the town where Monet lived, painted and created his water gardens. The exhibition starting July 12 will comprise 14 screens, inspired by certain Monet works… which themselves were inspired by Japan.

Other international artists include Shanta Rao (Indian-French), with an exhibition titled Les yeux turbides / Turbid Eyes in the commune Grand Quevilly, where she invites viewers to see how objects change with light; and South African Bianca Bondi who uses mounds of salt to create luminous landscapes for a show in Le Havre.

With the emphasis on light and dialogue across the festival, the words of Maya Angelou almost seem to form a refrain, calling out from Rouen, to rebut oppression and exclusion: "Leaving behind nights of terror and fear / I rise / into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear". – AM / SWAN

Photos (top to bottom): a still shot of Robert Wilson's Star and Stone: a kind of love...some say, picture by AM/SWAN; Maya Angelou, courtesy of Wiki Commons; the Rouen Cathedral on a moonlit night, picture by AM/SWAN; front cover of the festival catalogue, with a painting by David Hockney - Wind on the Pond; artwork by Marc Desgrandchamps, from the exhibition Les paysages demandent aussi un temps de pose, at Galerie Duchamp, Yvetot.

More information: Accueil - Normandie Impressionniste (normandie-impressionniste.fr)

NEW COMMUNITY LIT FESTIVAL LAUNCHED IN JAMAICA

Alongside the exciting boom in writing from the Caribbean, the number of literary festivals has been growing throughout the region over the past two decades, and the newest event takes place April 27 on the north coast of Jamaica.

Named after the parish where it is being held, the inaugural St Mary Literary Festival is an addition to established lit-fests in the region, such as the Calabash and Bocas festivals, and it joins emerging celebrations in the Virgin Islands, St Martin and Cuba.

It will feature some 50 writers, including a dozen high school students, for a day of prose and poetry readings, panel discussions and live music, according to the organizers.

The one-day event is the brainchild of Paul Ward, a retired high-school teacher and college lecturer, who moved to Jamaica from the UK in 1970 and married a St Mary resident two years later. Both he and his wife (also a former science teacher) have worked in Nigeria and Zimbabwe as well the United Kingdom and the Caribbean.

An avid reader and non-fiction writer, Ward says he has long engaged in community activity, and the festival has grown out of that. In the following email interview, he tells SWAN about the background to the event.

SWAN: How did the idea for this new festival come about?

Paul Ward: Margaret Busby, author and the first Black woman publisher in the UK, stayed with me for a few days following the Calabash Literary Festival in Treasure Beach (Jamaica) in May last year. I was taken by her anthology of writings by women of African descent, New Daughters of Africa. I took her to speak with the children at our two local schools - and it went down well, especially at the primary school. Some grade-six children wrote stories after that visit, which I put together in a little booklet for them, Likkle Pickney Tell It So.

Treasure Beach is however a long way from St. Mary, and it makes attendance (at Calabash) very costly, being an overnight affair. Thus, the idea of a similar (though more modest community event) on this side of the island: easily within reach from Kingston, combining established writers with aspiring ones and also some schoolchildren.

SWAN: What are some of the literary activities programmed, and what kind of audience are you expecting?

PW: The intention is to have a series of spoken presentations, selected from those who submit written versions, to make a varied and engaging event, divided into three 90-minute sessions. Brief questions and comments after each presentation will be encouraged. If possible, a group discussion of some literary topic will be included in each session. Background music will hopefully be of the traditional kind, such as that provided by drum musician (and poet) Mbala at the meetings of the Poetry Society in Kingston each month.

Some submissions, especially those not presented verbally, will be displayed on notice boards. The hoped-for audience (no, participants) will include the writers themselves, others who already know they enjoy literature, those who didn't know, some schoolchildren and their families.

SWAN: How do you plan to tap into the wide range of literature being produced by Jamaican writers at home and abroad?

PW: We have a contact list of well over 100, including personal contacts, literary organisations in Jamaica and abroad, information in local media (already on IRE FM) and visits to high schools in the St. Mary / Kingston area

SWAN: Can you please describe the venue / general location of the festival?

PW: The venue is perfect. A spacious, hexagonal church hall (which can take 200+ chairs) right next to the sea in Port Maria, capital of St. Mary, and next to the Anglican Parish Church, the main Parish Library, and historic Civic Centre with plenty of parking space. It is within minutes’ walk from the town centre, a bustling busy place with all the charm and challenges of rural Jamaica, for those who don't know them.

SWAN: Literary events have blossomed around the Caribbean over the past two decades. How do you see the St Mary festival fitting into this tradition? 

PW: Most of such events in Jamaica take place in the Kingston area. It is important to make them more accessible for a wider-spread audience, for both enjoyment and edification, and for upcoming writers including schoolchildren as well as those already established. In any case St Mary is known as a special parish: “Is St Mary mi come from” - is a widely-used expression of pride.

SWAN: How can the Jamaican cultural community, both at home and abroad, be of assistance?

PW: By submitting writings (along with videos if attendance is not possible), by spreading the word, by attending (and bringing others along), by contributing ideas on how to make it work best, both this first time and in the future. Monetary contributions would help of course, despite it being a low-budget, community initiative. - SWAN

Photos (top to bottom): A flyer for the St Mary Literary Festival; editor and publisher Margaret Busby (left) with a colleague at the Calabash festival, photo by A.M./SWAN; the venue-by-the-sea of the St. Mary Literary Festival, photo by Paul Ward.