Live-Filmed Performance

Noire

By Tania de Montaigne

Directed by Stéphane Foenkinos

Translation by Nicholas Elliott

In French with English subtitles

In Montgomery, Alabama, on the 2:30pm bus on March 2, 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give her seat to a white passenger. Despite threats, she remained seated. Thrown in jail, she decides to plead not guilty and to sue the city. No one before her had dared this.

Based on Tania de Montaigne’s eponymous novel, Noire is the story of this heroine, still alive but forgotten. Noire is also a portrait of this legendary city, where Martin Luther King, a 26-year-old pastor, and Rosa Parks, an unknown 40-year-old seamstress, crossed paths. Noire is the story of a fight that still goes on against racist violence and injustice.

On Saturday, April 24 at 5pm ET, Tania de Montaigne will present her creative process behind the performance of Noire and discuss what inspired her to bring the story of this little-known American heroine to a French stage. The talk will be moderated by specialist in US History Esther Cyna.

This live-filmed performance is presented as part of A Transatlantic Festival: Liberté d’expression, Free Speech, and "Cancel Culture", a festival co-presented by La Maison française of NYU, The Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US, and FIAF.

Learn more at fiaf.org.