American Rosa Parks became world famous for her refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus. But the real pioneer of this fight for civil rights was her: Claudette Colvin. In 1955, this black girl was 15 years old. Fallen into oblivion, it was resurrected by Tania de Montaigne with “Noire”, a book whose story the French writer is currently presenting in the form of an immersive installation in augmented reality at the International Documentary Film Festival (Fipadoc) in Biarritz. Interview.
RFI : It took a recording studio in Taiwan with 48 cameras rotating around the characters and a staging timed to the nearest second to create this interactive immersion installation with director Stéphane Foenkinos and filmmaker Pierre-Alain Giraud. Black, the little-known life of Claudette Colvin. How does this version of your story in augmented reality represent a pioneering experience for you? ?
Tania de Montaigne : She is a pioneer on many levels. First of all, I didn’t know this augmented reality technology at all. We had to invent and then embody. It’s something else again than when you write. There is a whole imagination, with actors who will play. We also had to choose moments since the experience lasts 30 minutes, so we couldn’t tell everything. In the end, it was truly an invention on every level. It’s awesome.
Black, the little-known life of Claudette Colvin, it was first a book, released in 2015 and awarded the Simon Veil prize, after a comic strip, then a theatrical adaptation directed by Stéphane Foenkinos with you as narrator, and today, your story has been transformed into an immersive installation. What changes every time ? The story ? The audience ? The reactions ? The impact ?
Between the three supports, what does not change is the text. The adaptation made by Stéphane Foenkinos is based on the book. He just tightened the pages. Instead, he focused on Claudette’s story. I find it incredible that he managed to reduce 180 pages into 25. And in these 25 pages, I may have made a small addition of an adjective or I don’t know what, but the essence of the text, this is the original text. We first try to ensure that everyone can understand who Claudette Colvin is and why she is not Rosa Parks. That’s really our subject.
In this story which remains the same each time, what is the most important aspect for you? ?
The most important aspect, and it was a real challenge in the immersive experience, is how this story is created with the person who reads it or watches it. And create space for this person, so that their imagination can also work. At the end of the day, if there is space, that means we will also be able to invent something. What interests me is that at the end of the immersive experience, like at the end of the play, like at the end of the book, you can say to yourself: “ Me, what am I doing here? OK, Claudette, that’s what she found unfair in the 1950s. Me, what do I find unfair today and how am I going to respond to it? ? » So I hope that it gives this impetus so that we realize that, in fact, being heroic is not being the most spectacular person who has 3 billion followers, it is being the person who has the strongest beliefs about what is right and what is wrong, and to maintain that no matter what.
The particularity of your proposed interactive installation is that each participant wears a Hololens helmet, a sort of ski goggles, to be able to see the holograms created, but they are not cut off from the world, they continue to perceive the room and the other participants around him. At the same time, he immerses himself, surrounded by 360-degree images and sounds, into history at the time of Claudette Colvin, in 1955, in Montgomery. He can wander through the story, stand next to the characters. In Black, each participant in this augmented reality experience can even pass their hand between the bars of the cell in which Claudette Colvin is located. But there’s one thing he can’t do, and that’s help her, intervene, change history. Will this be your next project? ?
Especially not. What interests me is that we know where we come from. The very important point for me is that we cannot intervene. History is not there to help us. The story is there, because it is there. Now, with this knowledge, we will try not to repeat history. But we can’t have this dynamic if we constantly erase what bothers us. So what’s interesting is that this actually happened and people paid the price for it. The question now is, does this satisfy us, what we live in? Is a return to that really what we want? We answer concrete questions, because we know concretely what happened.
There is a scene where we witness a black man buying shoes from the Claudette Colvin era.
This scene describes in this neighborhood of Montgomery the principle of segregation in 1955. That is to say, in a space, there can be two separate entrances so that blacks and whites do not mix. If there are not two entrances, then black is forced to stay outside. It’s interesting, because it also tells a good story about where Claudette Colvin comes from and why what she did is incredible. She grew up with the idea that when you’re black, you’re on the outside. For example, she never got to try on a pair of shoes. That means that if we give it to you and it doesn’t suit you, anyway, it’s too bad for you.
A question nags you in the book, in the show and in the immersive installation: why was it Rosa Parks who became famous and not Claudette Colvin ?
It’s really about the moment. What is paradoxical, between the two, it is Claudette Colvin who is supposed to represent modernity. She’s fifteen, Rosa Parks is 40, but it turns out that a year before all this happened, there was a Supreme Court ruling that made segregation in schools illegal. It has no impact in the South, we continue to segregate, but it has an impact on the state of mind. All the segregationist whites say to themselves: “ This is the beginning of the end, we have to close ranks. “There’s a lot of Ku Klux Klan membership and the leaders of the civil rights movement say, ” Now we’re going to need a victim who is blameless on every level and who can’t allow white prejudice to cling to her. “. In this case, the prejudices of white people are that a black person is necessarily very poor. It turns out that Claudette Colvin is very poor. And she’s fifteen, so you can project whatever you want about her future life. Then, physically, she has very dark skin, very curly hair, she is resolutely black… They say to themselves: “ If we could have a person who would be enviable for black people ? So with lighter skin, straight hair and acceptable for white people, it would still be better. » In this case, Rosa Parks, paradoxically, will tick all the boxes.
Claudette Colvin still lives. She is 84 years old. His criminal record, following his action in 1955, was deleted only two years ago, and only on his own initiative! What is the presence of Claudette Colvin in the collective consciousness today? ?
In the United States, it is a presence that almost does not exist. In any case, it has no particular existence in the national narrative. The paradox is that Claudette Colvin is a hundred times more famous in France than in her own country. Especially since we decided to do a lot of work with schools and, each time, we try to invent a new way of telling this story. We try to widen the circle as much as possible so that everyone has a little piece of Claudette Colvin in him and in her.