Noisy-le-Sec, on the edge of Romainville and Montreuil, in Seine-Saint-Denis. Turn immediately right, after the neighborhood bar. We stop at the bottom of the driveway in front of the gate of a small detached house. We enter. Alice Diop welcomes us to her home on the occasion of the theatrical release of her film Saint Omerin a space “warm and warm” who looks like him, does “of odds and ends, fabrics and funny cushions”.
The 43-year-old director talks about her childhood in the Cité des 3000 d’Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis) with parents from Senegal, both of whom died before she was 25, her dog who was the mascot of the neighbourhood, literature as a refuge in which to put the violence of reality at a distance, Nina Simone, the importance for her of language, the shock of discovering colonial history, all the doors opened to her by the works of Annie Ernals.
She also tells what attracted her to the news item that inspired Saint Omerher mother’s ring which serves as her talisman, her admiration for Lamine Badian Kouyaté, founder of the Xuly Bët brand, Simone de Beauvoir and the place she gives to doubt, universality and singularity: “The works that interest me the most are those that do not take power over anything, over any discourse, any thought and which leave us room to waver, change our minds, take the risk of getting lost. When I go to meet hunters for my documentary We, I take the risk of loving them. »
For four seasons, producer Géraldine Sarratia has questioned the construction and intricacies of a personality’s taste. Whether they are creators, artists, cooks or intellectuals, they all call upon their childhood memories, all evoke the social and cultural dimension of the construction of a corpus of tastes, of a set of values.
A podcast produced and presented by Géraldine Sarratia (Ideal Genre)
prepared with the help of Diane Lisarelli and Imène Benlachtar
Recording: Just Bruyat
Editing: Guillaume Girault
Music: Gotan Project