All our bellow exhibitions are available for renting. For further information, please contact Sarah Clement : 01.49.28.57.75 or s.clement@wanadoo.fr.

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North African Scopitone Night
Figures and life trajectories : A hundred year history of North Africans through posters.
Philippe Brault : It starts with…
France of Foreigners, France of Freedom
Life trajectories : African women in France

North African Scopitone Night

Scopitones and immigration

A unique night of North African scopitones to discover a poorly known musical heritage. The scopitone could be considered as the ancestor of the video clip. It is basically a jukebox invented in the 60s that associates sound with images. Filmed in 16 or 35 mm and then in super-8, artists from all over the world have sang in front of the cameras to provide content for scopitones. Among them, Arab and Berber artists constitute a major part of scopitones' catalogues.

This presentation will help you discover these stars of that time who were produced and often settled in France such as Kamal Hamadi, Noura, Slimane Azem, Les Abranis, Idir and so on.

At that time, these clips were played on these scopitones displayed in pubs, bars and cafés. These machines then played the first images of the North African music in exile.

This night offers the opportunity to discover the best range of North African scopitones, all illustrated with comments from a scopitones specialist.

Kamani fil Telphon de Khlifi Ahmed Rabbi Adh issahel de Noura et Kamal Hamadi Latmena emra de Salah Sadaoui Lahla isid Khire de Abelwahab Mazouni Clichy de Mohamed Mazouni Athedjaladde de Les Abranis Madame encore à boire de Slimane Azem Zwits ruits de Idir Ach Dani de Salah Sadaoui et Kaci Tizi ouzou Zerdet couscous de Mohamed Jerrari Harlem Shuffle de Vigon Mazalni maak de Dahmane Harrachi

A night proposed by Génériques and produced by Davis-Boyer.

Figures and life trajectories : A hundred year history of North Africans through posters.

Posters of immigration

Posters claim, inform, demand and seduce. Whether political, artistic or for advertising, posters always reveal issues and challenges at stake at a time. With this exhibition, we made the choice to study the image of the North African in the XXth century along with all the stereotypes and representations carried and diffused by this popular means of communication.

Across time, designers and sponsors of such posters, themselves imprisoned by the stigmas, have diffused and imposed an ever changing image of the North African. The zouave, the belly dancer, the worker and the immigrant are all side by side part of the collective imagination. However, North Africans have progressively started to express themselves with this very same means of communication in order to lead their own emancipation.

From the orientalist and exotic representations of natives in the XIXth century to the emergence of Arab artists and social movements in the 1980s, this exhibition displays about 60 posters, all direct witnesses of the key moments and settlement process of immigrants in France.

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Philippe Brault : It starts with…

Aging as a migrant worker, France, 1994-1997

Born in 1965, Philippe Brault has been a photographer since 1993.

He regularly works for the French press, mostly with Libération, Nova Magazine, Le Monde, Télérama etc. He has also realized several photographic reports: among them: Les poseurs de voies (1995), l'hivers le blocus (Armenia 1994), Le bel espoir (San Domingo, Haiti, Cuba, 1998).

In 1996, together with eight young photographers, he created a website dedicated to photography (revue.com). The following year, he realized a report on the making of Yamina Benguigui's movie: Mémoires d'immigrés.

Made up of about 20 photographs, the exhibition: It starts with… is the fruit of a pluri-annual work that led to the publication of a book (Editions Actes Sub). The later unveils the reality beyond the fact of aging in France as a migrant worker. It gathers the photographic work by Philippe Brault and the texts of the writer Christophe Gallaz.

" A young and modest photographer with an eye inevitably human, caring for a world and people who suffer, who are in pain (…) It starts with destabilizing events and major difficulties and it ends with an infinite sadness that little by little becomes anger." Christian Caujolle (from the postface)

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France of Foreigners, France of Freedom

Press and foreign communities in the national history

First major exhibition dedicated to the history of immigration since the Revolution, it has been presented in February 1989 on the occasion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in Marseilles, Orléans, Strasbourg and the Great Arch in Paris. From the first newspapers in Arabic published in France in the mid XIXth century to the today's Kurdish or Armenian scientific journals, the exhibition France of foreigners, France of Freedom tells the two centuries history of hundreds of newspapers founded by the foreign communities settled in France. It also presents the main figures and personalities who created the "sheets of exile"..

Made shorter, the exhibition has then been presented in a dozen of NGOs and schools since 1992. The new version is still available but requires a 50m long space.

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Press review

Migrations et Pastorale "...en entrant dans la première salle d'exposition du musée d'histoire, on avait l'impression de pénétrer dans un univers magique... "

Le Soir " ...un véritable trésor... "

Parcours " Une exposition à Marseille raconte pour la première fois " l'autre histoire " de France... Un véritable objet d'art... "

Le Provençal " Superbe exposition consacrée aux médias et aux communautés dans l'histoire nationale... exemple de ce qu'il faut faire pour toucher un large public... "

Le Méridional " ...Les organisateurs de cette exposition ont su jouer, habilement, des ressources de la muséographie moderne pour rendre vie à ces propos que le grand vent de l'histoire balaie "

République du Centre " ...une fresque de presse longue de 150 mètres sur trois de haut, composée de " hiéroglyphes émouvants ", épousant les murs et représentant un véritable exploit technique... "

Les Nouvelles d'Orléans " ...intéressante exposition, l'une des meilleures proposées dans le cadre du Bicentenaire... "

Croissance " ...superbe exposition. "

Enjeux et débats " France des étrangers, France des libertés est la première grande exposition qui illustre une dimension permanente et trop méconnue de notre histoire... "

Politis " ...douloureux et splendide... un splendide livre accompagne l'exposition... "

Télérama " A travers Journaux et photos, transparaît de 1789 à nos jours, un bouillonnant melting-pot "

Le Monde " ...cette exposition souligne le rôle attractif joué par l'image révolutionnaire de la France et sa réputation de terre hospitalière. Un passé qui plaide pour aujourd'hui. " " Ce journal mural, c'est un siècle et demi de révolutions et de convulsions dans le monde "

Le Figaro " Dans son évocation du passé, l'exposition doit permettre aux visiteurs de penser l'avenir. "

Libération " Une contribution passionnante à l'histoire de l'immigration... " " ...l'histoire des journaux immigrés : une mémoire en 2000 titres. "

Le Quotidien " Un éclairage historique sur l'intégration "

Passages " ...l'exposition réalisée par l'association Génériques a le mérite d'être émouvante et magnifiquement mise en espace. "

TDC " L'exposition regorge de documents authentiques et inédits. "

Jeunesse ouvrière " ... cette exposition fait aussi le lien entre 1789, cet événement fondateur de la France moderne et l'avènement de cette Europe d'après 1992... "

Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace " Une manière originale de parcourir l'histoire et de comprendre combien l'histoire est multiple. "

L'Alsace " Un journal mural géant qui rafraîchit notre mémoire collective en retraçant les étapes des différentes migrations... "

Life trajectories : African women in France.

Photographs by Danièle Taulin Hommell

Arrived on their own or to meet their husbands, alone or with their families, with or without academic background, these African women have to face a wide range of very challenging situations of the daily life.

The exhibition illustrates the encounter between these women from abroad and the French society. These photographs try to highlight different aspects of the life of African women at different stages of their trajectories in France: their arrival, the confrontation with administrations, the learning of French, the challenges of the work place, their hobbies, their familial situations and finally their involvement in civil society.

At their arrival in France, these African women hope to progressively find their place in this new framework. The questions, challenges, difficulties they face but also the successes they gain are all explored in this exhibition. This project aims at showing all the energy deployed by these women to adapt and how they have enriched our society with their experiences. The photographer mostly focused on the life of 8 women with very diverse trajectories but it's a whole other part of the French society that is exposed.

This outstanding work had been realized in 2004 thanks to the numerous encounters of the photographer Danièle Taulin-Hommell with women and NGOs. NGOs mentioned in there are mostly located in les Hauts-de-Seine, les Yvelines et le Val d'Oise, en Ile-de-France.

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