Isabelle Boni-Claverie

Isabelle Boni-Claverie
Born Ivory Coast
Nationality French, Ivorian
Occupation Author, screenwriter, film director
Years active 1990–present
Notable work Too Black to Be French? (documentary, 2015), Pour la Nuit (short film, 2004), La Grande Dévoreuse (novel, 2000)
Website boniclaverie.com

Isabelle Boni-Claverie(/ˈɪzəˌbɛl ˈboʊni-Claverie/) is a author, screenwriter, and film director born in Ivory Coast. She moved to Switzerland when she was a few months old, then to France. She mostly grew up in Paris.

She is the granddaughter of Alphonse Boni, a French magistrate from 1939 to 1959, during the colonisation of Ivory Coast.[1] After the independence of Ivory Coast, Alphonse Boni became Chief Justice of the country. Her grandmother, Rose-Marie Galou, was born in Gaillac in southwestern France. She was one of the first women from this small town to marry an African in 1937.[2]

Isabelle Boni-Claverie studied French modern Literature and Art History. After graduating from the Sorbonne, she entered the prestigious Parisian film school La Fémis where she graduated in 2000 with a specialization in screenwriting.

Writing career

At the age of 17, Isabelle Boni-Claverie launched her career by writing a novel, La Grande Dévoreuse (The Great Devourer). Set in Abidjan, La Grande Dévoreuse tells the struggle of two teenagers to fulfill their dreams. It received an award at "Le Prix du Jeune Ecrivain de Langue Française"[3] and was published in a collective book, Villes d’exil, by Le Monde Editions. 10 years later it was republished in the Ivory Coast by NEI.[4]

After that, she was asked by the notorious art curator, Simon Njami, to write for Planète Jeunes, a francophone monthly youth magazine. She collaborated with Planète Jeunes in 1993. She published a story about Abidjan’s youth and many articles about culture.

In 1994, Simon Njami asked Isabelle Boni-Claverie to collaborate to Revue Noire, a magazine dedicated to contemporary African art. Isabelle Boni-Claverie was still a student when she started a six year collaboration with Revue Noire.[5] She was in charge of the cinema section.

From 1999 to 2005 she collaborated with Afrique Magazine where she created and ran the column « Ma nuit avec » (My night with) - a series of reviews where she would spend the evening with a celebrity.

Isabelle currently holds a column both in the French Huffington Post[6] and in the Nouvel Obs[7] where she regularly publishes about what it means to be Black in France, diversity and inclusion.

Short Films

Due to her growing interest in cinema, she wrote the screenplay for her first short film, Le Génie d'Abou (Abu’s Genie, which she directed in 1997. At that time, she was a first year student at La Fémis and Le Génie d’Abou was supposed to be a mere training exercice. The school exceptionally accepted to showcase her short film in festivals. Screened in New York, Montreal, La Havane, Perugia and lots of other festivals around the world, it received a special mention at the International Short Film Festival of Abidjan. According to the African Film Festival in New York,[8] Le Génie d’Abou is a film about Abou, a sculptor who is accompanied by a woman whom he wonders whether she is an evil spirit or his muse. Another woman with an extraodinary figure arrives on the scene offering to be his model. Through this scenario, the film explores the issues between black and white bodies.

In 2004, she directed another short film, beautifully shot in black and white : Pour la Nuit (For the Night). Initially set to be filmed in Abidjan, because of the troubled politic situation at that time, the shooting was relocated to Marseille, in France.[9] A film about grief and identity, Pour la Nuit was distinguished by several awards : Jury Award of the festival Provence, Terre de Cinéma, People’s Award of Amiens’ house of arrest, Feminine interpretation award at the International Short film Festival of Abidjan, Special mention at Festival du cinéma Africain, d’Asie et d’Amérique Latine, Special mention by Signis oecumenic award. It was in competition at Locarno, Amiens, FESPACO and Carthage.

Screenplays

Because writing has always been her passion, alongside with developing her film director career, Isabelle Boni-Claverie never stopped writing, notably for the small screen. She took part in various screenplays for primetime and access TV series. She was one of the head writers of Seconde Chance (Second chance) a TV series aired on TF1 in 2008, and nominated at the International Emmy Awards in 2009.

Her most significant collaborations with other filmmakers were with Haroun Mahamat Saleh for Sexe, Gombo et beurre salé (Sex, okrah and salted butter), a comedy aired on ARTE in 2008, starring Aissa Maiga, Diouc Koma and Mata Gabin ; Idrissou Mora-Kpai for two of his documentaries : Si-Gueriki (2002) and the award winning feature documentary Arlit (2008) ; and well known documentarist Jean-Marie Téno, with whom she developed several scripts.

Documentary films

In order to complete her film directing career and with the purpose of telling real stories, Isabelle Boni-Claverie directed a few documentaries: -La Coiffeuse de la rue Pétion (The hairdresser of Petion’s Street), shot in 1999 is about diversity. -L’Image, le vent et Gary Cooper (The image, the wind and Gary Cooper) was commissioned by the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona, to accompany the exhibition "Africas, the artist and the city" in 2001. -Documenta Opening Night, aired in 2002 on Arte, is a short documentary clip about Okwui Enwezor’s Documenta in Kassel, Germany.

Her most recent documentary, Trop Noire pour être Française ? (Too Black to Be French?) produced by Quark Productions was released on Arte on July 3td 2015.[10][11][12] Combining an intimate approach with the testimony of black-skinned French citizens, and historians or sociologists like Pap Ndiaye, Achille Mbembe, Eric Fassin, Patrick Simon , she delivers a moving yet instructive documentary in which "she peels back the layers of race relations" according to Afropunk.[13] It demonstrates the effect of people's perspectives, misunderstandings, and the contradictions nestled in French society; where the French colonial past still conditions racism and discrimination against the black citizens .

In February 17 and 18, Too black to be French? will be screened respectively at NYU and Columbia University, with Isabelle Boni-Claverie debating these issues for the first time in the United States.

Bibliography

Filmography

References


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