African Voices of Paris / Voix africaines de Paris

Professor Jen Bouchard, Normandale Community College, and filmmaker Joanna Kohler, Kohler Productions, joined us last week for a presentation on their project African Voices of Paris / Voix africaines de Paris, a series of short documentary-style films that reflect the diverse experiences of individuals of African origins living and working in Paris. The project examines what it means to be African, French, or both in an increasingly globalized world and how, specifically, the cultural, intellectual, and economic contributions of Africans and French people of African origin have shaped Paris.

At the event, Bouchard and Kohler screened each of the four films in the series, discussed their creation process and the films' content, and provided resources for learning more and integrating these films into French language and culture classes using multimodal pedagogies. Learn more about the African Voices of Paris project and view the films on their website, and watch their presentation at the University of Minnesota below.

The African Voices of Paris Project was completed with co-sponsorship from the African Studies Initiative (ASI), a Title VI African Studies National Resource Center funded by the US Department of Education at the University of Minnesota. This event took place on Wednesday, October 31, 2018, and was co-sponsored by the ASI, the Department of French & Italian, and the Institute for Global Studies.