Part of the Blackness in French and Francophone Film, Maison Française, Columbia University.

After her master class, Amandine Gay will be joined by Nora Philippe.

Amandine Gay is the new name in  “French guerilla cinema” and Afro-feminist cinema. She wrote, directed, produced and distributed Speak Upherself, as her first full length documentary, and it was a necessary and urgent film (Speak Up is being screened at the Lenfest Center on November 10 at 2:00 P.M.). For this master class, Amandine Gay will be talking about her work on her next film project on international adoption, a phenomenon that is rarely spoken about by those who have experienced it personally, as she has. “Reclaiming the narrative” is the idea that guides Amandine Gay, who was born to an unknown mother (“née sous X” in French), a black baby adopted and raised by a rural white French family. She will first share in this master class the results of several years of academic research conducted on international adoption, its history and current state of affairs, using sociology, psychology and decolonial analysis. Next she will offer us a first ever look at her work in progress, from international casting of interviewees who were adopted, to the discovery of remarkable audiovisual achives, intimate Super8 films and astounding documents about unknown aspects of certain American international adoption practices.