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Just a Movement

Midnight weekend screenings happen on Friday & Saturday nights (meaning arrive on Friday and/or Saturday night by 11:45pm for seating, the movie starts after midnight)!

Director: Vincent Meessen Run Time: 110 min. Release Year: 2020 Language: French, Mandarin, Wolof

Omar is dead!“, a voice cried out in Dakar, on the 11th of May in 1973. A young militant philosopher, and the articulate Maoist in Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (1967) had allegedly committed suicide in his Gorée Island prison cell. His family and friends did not believe a word of it, demanding that light be shed on this political crime.  Just a Movement is a free reprise of La Chinoise, that reallocates its characters fifty years later in Dakar, and updates its plot, offering a meditation on the relationship between politics, justice, and memory. Omar Blondin Diop, becomes the key character. Through this cinematographic gesture that oscillates and circulates between documentary and filmed essay, Vincent Meessen questions the Senegal of yesterday and today, and the not-so-subtle neo-imperialism of a China that uses the soft powers of education and culture to penetrate the present and future of Senegal.

Directed & Written by: Vincent Meessen; (France/Belgium)

VINCENT MEESSEN is a visual artist and filmmaker whose artistic and filmic framework interrogate narratives of history, colonial legacies, and the westernization of imaginaries. Messen  uses procedures of collaboration that emphasize the intelligence of collectives. His films have been screened at numerous museums and art centers including Centre Pompidou (Paris), HKW (Berlin), MUMOK (Vienna), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), in film festivals including IFFR (Rotterdam), IDFA (Amsterdam), FID (Marseille) and FESPACO (Ouagadougou). Main solo exhibitions have taken place in Montreal, Toronto, Paris, Basel, Brussels, Bordeaux, Mexico, Amsterdam. Vincent Meessen has represented Belgium at the 56th Venice Biennale with Personne et les autres, a group show with ten invited artists from four continents. Vincent Meessen is a member of Jubilee-platform for research and artistic production.

The Carnegie Museum of Art in partnership with Row House Cinema presents the 58th Carnegie International Film Festival curated by Rasha Salti. The festival opens at Row House Cinema on Friday March 3 and runs through Sunday, March 11.   

—–Showtimes—–
Just a Movement (Juste un movement) – 3/3/23 @ 6:30 pm with an intro by festival curator Rasha Salti
Just a Movement (Juste un movement) – 3/4/23 @ 12:00 pm
Just a Movement (Juste un movement) – 3/11/23 @ 6:30 pm

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