Ouvrir la voix (Amandine Gay): Opening One’s Eyes To Today’s Afropeans

Abstract

Amandine Gay’s 2017 documentary Ouvrir la voix (“Speak Up”) enlightens its audience about issues facing women of colour in France and in Belgium. Far from only lamenting the systematic racism and oppression that the twenty-four Afropeans in the film face on a daily basis, Gay lets them redefine their identities using their own voices and their testimonies of lived experiences, as well as their body language to tell their stories. By marrying their life stories to their artistic creations (in performance), Gay exposes how these women fight hypersexualization and stereotypes by exercising their creative license. By shedding light on these Black and Brown women, Gay redefines Afropean women by their creativity and activism.

Keywords

• afro-feminism
• racism
• intersectionality
• performance
• activism
• representation