Alain Bidard : "The Black Caribbean woman is already the woman of this century and the woman of the next century.”
It’s a great honor for me to launch the "Interview" section with Alain Bidard. "Battledream Chronicle" is the movie I analyzed for the first episode of my podcast Karukerament. When I decided to do interviews to create more content for the site, it seemed obvious to me that his words should be the first to be published as well. Like many Caribbean creators, he had to use his self-taught spirit to develop his skills. He read to expand his knowledge and broaden his horizons. He has faced and continues to face obstacles to get his work broadcast. Reading this interview taught me a lesson about courage, resilience and Caribbean pride. Enjoy !
Alain Bidard
The awakening
How did you get into animation film?
Even as a child, I have always been passionate about the art of telling stories through pictures. I created stories, comic strips, scenarios whenever I had the slightest free time. Comics were my first passion until high school and then I became passionate about animation and computer graphics because it was a job that was beginning to be talked about a lot. I confess that I never saw a Disney animated film during all my childhood. My first Disney animated film, I discovered it during my high school years with "The Lion King". And it was also at this time that the animated film "Akira" was released, which with "Patlabor", "Gunm", "Venus Wars" and "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind", completely changed my vision and my consideration of the art of animation. I first intended to become a doctor because biology was a subject I enjoyed and I had excellent grades, but mathematics definitely convinced me to pursue an artistic career instead. I only applied to one big school, SUPINFOCOM, the best 3d art school in Europe at that time. A risky step which nevertheless bore fruit since I was able to study there, acquire my training and my diplomas. But SUPINFOCOM is a school more centered on art than on writing so I decided to learn how to write screenplays by myself. When I left school, I struggled a lot to find work in Paris. Discrimination, saturated market, crisis. There were many reasons. So I went back to Martinique to raise funds to return to France later. In Martinique, there was no market for technicians in my area. But customers were intrigued by the idea of being able to have local cartoons because it was something completely non-existent here. I was mostly trained in 3D animation, but since there was a demand for it, I had to learn all the other disciplines of 3D film design and then set up my own company to tap into this innovative new market. As a result, I never went back to France. That's how I was able to create about ten short films, many commercials and ads and several documentaries.
What inspires you and is the Caribbean aspect always a key element?
Most of my clients come from the prevention sector and that made me create a lot of films whose goal was to raise public awareness. So it's quite natural that I became passionate about films with a message for my personal projects.
I get inspired by situations of injustice and distress. I want my films to serve a purpose beyond pure entertainment. I want them to bring more empathy and understanding by explaining what people refuse to understand. I've been able to address themes such as racism, incest, AIDS, suicide, euthanasia, domestic violence, etc. I've also been able to talk about the issues that people are facing.
During the 2000’s, I discovered the history of Black people, the one I hadn’t learned in school. If I knew Kant, Molière, Diderot, Camus, Nietzche, Kierkegaard, Gide, Chateaubriand or Baudelaire well, I was unaware of my own culture or of neighboring cultures. And I confess that I didn't care. I was completely formatted with all the prejudices of colonial formatting. It was when I finished my second animated film and when I realized with horror that my first two films developed racist and Eurocentric themes that I was afraid of what was going on inside me. Because I had created all this unconsciously believing I was doing the right thing. It was as if I was a machine with a virus. I had to clean up. So I unlearned everything and recreated myself. So I was able to discover Shek Anta Diopp, all the books by Frantz Fanon, Césaire, the Art of War by Sun Tzu, the history of Africa, Swahili, the Orishas, the true face of Haiti, the Moors, etc. I stopped writing and thinking in French. I made English my new main language. All this has fed my vision of the world and built my own style. A style that revolves around stories based on heroes who look like us, prisoners of a situation that is beyond them and who take their destiny into their own hands while bringing great positive things to the society of which they are a part of.
My stories are my point of view on the world. I am Caribbean, my ancestors are African, so my stories always revolve around this region and this culture. My choices are also based on a feel that something is lacking and a sense of duty. The lack of representation of our true culture, not this exoticism or this “doudouism” that we see too often. We talk about French philosophy. We tell ourselves that we have no philosophy in the Caribbean. But it exists. Our relationship to essentialism and existentialism is profoundly different from France and Europe, for example. I want us to discover our Caribbean philosophy. Because it is very different from French and European culture. And any curious mind, thirsty for discoveries and devoid of prejudices, wants to discover this new vision of the world that is not known because it is a fascinating journey. Because of this sense of duty, I find myself among the pioneers of Caribbean animated cinema, and therefore I must create projects that offer a positive thematic direction to all those who will make Caribbean animated cinema when they’re ready. As a result, I avoid subjects that "essentialize" us, such as the objectifying representation of women, or the Black man who is a gangster, or being biracial presented as the only way to climb the social ladder, and many other clichés.
“Battledream Chronicle”, the realization of a vision
What was the creative process for the film "Battledream Chronicle"?
The basic concept of the Battledream Chronicle was to tell the story of the abolition of slavery and to show that this freedom came through the struggles of the slaves and not through Victor Schoelcher. Knowing that a story makes us identify with the heroes, I wanted to show us in a new light and force the Martinican viewers to position themselves as masters of their destiny. To do this, I started with a simple question: "If Martinique found itself in the role of master of the world and had to determine and organize the future of all other nations, what direction would it take the world to? Would we be men of wisdom or colonialist dictators? The things we rightly accuse France of, would we do them differently if we were in the same position?”. That’s a deep and moving question that one doesn’t necessarily want to answer. Yet it’s the foudation of everything to show the world who we are and what we bring to the human species, no matter how small we are on a map. To choose the forces that would meet in the film, I identified several components in Martinique. A béké colonial power. A mass of oppressed Black people. An Indian and Asian community in between. A religious power with the Church. A secret spiritual network with Freemasonry. Martinique being a prison island. France was the mother nation. And the whole story revolving around the war between the Black people and the békés. First during the slave era, then the colonial period, then the post-colonial period. I wanted to focus on the slave era in this first film. That’s why the béké colonial power became the Deicides. The mass of oppressed Black people became the group of heroes. Then there’s the Indian and Asian community in between, represented by Eole de Spika and Nyssa. I chose to merge the power of Church and Freemasonry into one entity with the Templar figure of Balrog (The Templars being the moment in History when Church and Freemasonry were one). Martinique being a prison island as well as a polluted island where people need cybernetic devices to breathe. And finally there’s France through Mortemonde, a crow-infested nation whose only colors are black and red (symbolyzing control by death and blood). And everything revolves around the war between the heroes and the Deicides (The Battledream Game).
The creation of the film took 7 years. In animation, we write and rewrite until the film is finished so we can talk about 7 years of writing and 50 versions of the script. It was first meant to be produced in the traditional way (with a team of artists), but the successive refusals of any potential investor ended up being discouraging. But as with every request, I had to produce a piece of the film on my own to convince, I ended up developing production methods adapted to a solo artist and I told myself that since it was already well underway, I might as well continue to the end, regardless of the response I was getting. It was a one-time bet because what I did was the antithesis of traditional production methods, and no one had ever made a good quality 3D animation film alone before. My chances of failure were huge. I blindly moved forward for years, but it worked.
I opted for a 3D animation style called Celshading. It’s 3D animation that visually looks like a cartoon on paper. Why did I choose this style? Because originally, I draw and I'm passionate about line drawing. And I wanted to see my line in the final result. I found that traditional Disney and Pixar 3D animation made the artist's style disappear in the final result and I felt as if the computer was destroying the artists' part of humanity in the final step. I didn't want that for my films.
Since I had to do the whole film on my own, I had to merge steps to save time. For example, the storyboard step and the layout step (staging the shot in the 3d space) are two separate steps on big animated films. I decided to merge them together and this considerably accelerated my process. Sometimes I would animate before I had finished all the character modeling (we do the opposite). Everything was very organic and less linear than a classic Disney film with an army of 3D artists.
Originally, a musician was planned to create the music for the film. But artistic differences put an end to the collaboration before the process could begin. In France, musicians are very close to their music and generally don't like to redo the music according to the director's wishes. In the USA, it's quite the opposite. I had already had a very good collaboration with an American musician. She wrote the music for the film "Eragon". But then she became a mother and stopped working for a while. So since I had a very precise idea of what I wanted, I decided to try a new challenge: to learn how to create my music. It took two months for me to learn. I was already used to listening only to classical music even to relax, so the way to structure the music came to me quickly. I was pleased with the first results, other people as well. As a result, I started writing all the music for the film. I created everything by ear, with no knowledge of music theory. It was an experience that I loved, and so I began a more academic study of music afterwards. And I'm still studying. Then I had to learn how to mix music because I didn't know how to do it and studio fees were exorbitant. I equipped myself with mid-range equipment. It took me 6-8 weeks but I managed to do it on my own. And by March 2015, the film was finished.
Battledream Chronicle (2015)
Syanna is a heroine from Martinique, a positive figure to inspire children. She's a fanm doubout [t/n: it can be roughly translated to “a strong (Black) woman”]. In episode 1 of my podcast, I said that she was a Potomitan fanm of a new generation. How do you define her as a young Black Caribbean woman of the 22nd century?
Syanna represents the Black Caribbean woman. She is a queen. She knows how to fight, how to take a blow, how to return it. And she is also someone fragile, human and knows her limits. She is fierce and hates injustice. And she refuses to let injustice go unpunished. She is modelled on our women from Martinique and Guadeloupe. This is something very foreign to people who live in patriarchal and Western societies with a few exceptions (Iceland for example). For example in symbolism, in the Western world, the triangle pointing upwards symbolizes fire and man, and pointing downwards it represents woman and water. In the Caribbean, it is the opposite: the woman is the triangle of fire and the man is the triangle of water. The man is the temperant, and the woman is the solar element. In demonstrations, in debates, in transportation, and in many other places, women will do what men won’t dare to do and they’ll go where men will stop halfway. Their solar radiation is very characteristic of our regions. When I traveled in France and in the USA, and even in South America, I saw men have an ascendancy that does not exist in our regions. Women have a submissive attitude that doesn’t exist in our regions. It's so foreign to patriarchal cultures that I wanted to show it on the screen. I think it’s a good representation of who we are, how we are different from others and what we have to bring to the Earth. The Black Caribbean woman is already, for me, the woman of this century and the woman of the next century.
Battledream Chronicle (2015)
The other aspect of things is the anticipation aspect. This is science fiction. I tried to stick to the way things might unfold for us in the future. And I think the colonial Martinique that we have today will no longer exist in that form. And we are going to go through such a troubled time that the survivors will come out of it much stronger and more determined than what we see today. Based on INSEE statitcs and on various studies, a collapse of the local society is inevitable in the upcoming decades. And our rebirth would, I think, give life to these characters inflamed by the desire for justice and harmony that we see in the film. Characters like Syanna.
What feedback did you receive in Martinique/Guadeloupe, in France and abroad?
The feedback in Martinique has been very positive. Overall, the audience came out surprised by the quality, the story, the fact that it was the first time they had seen themselves in an animated film and that this representation was positive, the elements that clearly define the film as a film of Martinican and Caribbean culture (the soukounyan), the humor even if it wasn’t omnipresent, and the point of view of the story.
However, the film didn’t attract as many people to the Madiana movie theater as we would have liked because there was a lot of reluctance ("it's a Martinican film, so it must be bad quality") and an excessive competition (4 animated films on the screen at the same time including a Pixar film and also a Djamel Debouze's film). “Battledream Chronicle” was screened for 3 weeks. We were planning a release in Guadeloupe and French Guiana but the Elizé circuit gave up. It’s mainly the Ciné Woulé Company association which will continue the distribution of the film over several years and make discover the film to the numerous latecomers in Martinique. The reception of the film is still very good on the island. The film was broadcast in Guadeloupe mainly by the crew Yé Clik, which had been supporting me long way before the film was started. They helped the film a lot to get visibility in Guadeloupe. There was also a screening at the Cinestar. Again, the reception was very good.
There was also a screening in Trinidad and Tobago at the Animae Caribe Festival in a packed house. Same in Jamaica, Aruba and Barbados. Caribbean people loved and appreciated the fact that it’s a film that shows our culture, beliefs and ideologies. I must confess that I didn’t expect so many positive reviews and opinions. I am very grateful to the audience for that. Abroad, outside of France, the film has been praised. The audience liked discovering Martinique, which the majority didn’t know of (they didn't even know where it was located). They liked to see the figure of the strong woman and the film was very quickly seen as strongly feminist. Black viewers saw themselves through the protagonists' struggle and they treated the film as if it was about them, even though they weren’t in the same geographical area. In animation festivals, some animation problems in some parts of the film were mentioned to me, but apart from that, the audience and the critics really enjoyed the film. The film won 22 awards and 75 festival nominations around the world.
In France, it's another story. The film was completely blocked. Those who have screened the film are Black festivals, such as the Black Genius festival, or the Semaine des Outremers initiative, or organizations linked to a film genre (science fiction) with a screening in Nantes for instance. And that's it for France. All the distributors, broadcasters and exhibitors were solicited directly or indirectly, and none of them wanted to distribute the film. Several influential people, including Euzhan Palcy, tried to convince broadcasters, but no one wanted to get involved. French festivals didn’t want the film either. This includes small festivals but also Cannes and Annecy. And the "It's not in our editorial line" apology almost became a litany. During certain screenings, some high-ranking people wanted to know what effect the film had had on the children in the Outremer [t/n: overseas territories like Guadeoupe, Martinique etc]. They almost seemed to fear a risk of radicalization because of the film. There were a few attempts to buy the film to block the rights and prevent the film from being distributed. Ultimately, there was a lot of unecessary extreme reactions just for an animated film.
What can you tell us about the TV adaptation?
In 2018, the pilot of an adaptation into an animated series was born. It’s a prequel to the feature film that fits into the temporal hollow of the film's opening credits. The world of Battledream is vast. And each character alone deserves its own series, there’s so much to say about them. And the series was the beginning of this process to allow us to learn more about the Battledream Chronicle universe. We had to learn a lot of things about the origins of each character and also about the origin of Torquemada, the great villain of the feature film.
The series pilot was, unlike the feature film, produced directly in English. As a result, it received better exposure in festivals and was able to win more than 25 awards and it got more than 100 nominations. The initial project was to create a first season of 13 episodes. But the main broadcaster and investor was absorbed by a British company and withdrew from all the Caribbean projects it had decided to help (3 projects in all). And unfortunately, Battledream Chronicles was one of them. This series was a team effort. I continued to do all the artistic part alone but this time there were several producers, actors from all over the Caribbean, mixers from the Caribbean, USA, Canada and UK. But some artistic differences created disagreements between some key members of the team. As a result, the project can hardly be done under the same conditions. So the series is currently on stand-by, but I think I will relaunch the production in the future. I'm in the process of getting closer to several broadcasters. And I'm also counting on a fresh impulse from the second “Battledream Chronicle” feature film to relaunch the project.
The caribbean and cinema
What’s your take on Afrofuturism or science fiction in general on the international scene and in the Caribbean?
Afrofuturism is a wonderful and fascinating genre but it hides a more gloomy reality. Until now, our destiny, our future were decided by others. And today the Black communities have had enough and want to take their destiny back into their own hands. And Afrofuturism is the artistic representation of this ideal. It’s a genre that has been around for a long time, but it’s only recently that all Black communities around the world seem to want to take their destiny in hand at the same time. So this is something very positive. But I think we have to analyze what this Afrofuturism shows to see what it proposes to us and whether this is what we want to. “Black Panther” is the best known work, but T'Challa's decision to open his technology to the rest of the world, and especially to colonialist nations, is not unanimously supported by the Black community.
Battledream Chronicle (2015)
Very often, Afrofuturistic works I have seen choose monarchy as their government (even Battledream Chronicle). Is this what we really want? Even in Martinique, does the constant need for a leader to "lead the people" reflect an ancestral attachment to the monarchy among Afrodescendants? This is a fascinating aspect of our culture. Would it mean that our people doesn't feel good in democracy, deep down in their soul? Or would it be more complex than that? This is a discussion to have…
In the Caribbean, Afrofuturism is vital. It is through it that present and future generations will shape the future of the region. All the islands have been or are still colonies of Western powers. For too long we have been manipulated like puppets and have lost this ability to define our own path. In Martinique, we are almost incapable of projecting ourselves even ten years into the future. As a result, we live mostly in the present. From one electoral mandate to the next. And we make monumental mistakes that we then pay for by bringing down the entire island into the abyss by our past choices. Afrofuturism is this movement that will show us how to regain control of our destiny.
In Martinique, we have no Afrofuturism except Battledream. But maybe the society isn’t ready for it yet. In Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica, Afrofuturism is taking off and it is a beautiful evolution to see. In Europe, for example, artistic movements generally show what’s going on deep in society. For example, between 1800 and 1940, the rise of Symbolist Art was mainly motivated by a clergy dispossessed of its ancestral power, women taking back power, and the arrival of psychoanalysis to explain the human mind. In the same way that today's superhero films only reflect the deep despair of the peoples of the world, the fact that they’re overwhelmed by the problems they face, their impossibility to evolve, and the vain hope of seeing supermen or gods able to save the world so that they don't have to do it themselves.
What’s your take on the current state of Caribbean cinema?
For now, Caribbean cinema is a booming industry. The democratization of digital equipment has made it possible to reduce costs and adapt them to the budgets available in the region. The collapse of the star system in the 90's/2000 makes it much easier to create a good movie even without a headliner. This is a very good thing for low-budget films. But a film exists above all through its distribution and broadcasting. And its ability to make money is what justifies the existence of this industry. As far as English and Spanish-language films are concerned, there are tremendous distribution opportunities in North, Central and South America. It is a cinema that travels and crosses borders very easily. Which is a very good thing.
Francophone or "West Indian" cinema, on the other hand, is trapped by the language barrier. Distribution in France depends of compliance with an editorial line that is too often discriminatory. This limits or prohibits the distribution of the film on the most interesting French-speaking territory which is France itself. Apart from France, there are too few other French-speaking territories to really get back on its feet financially. Moreover, the disappearance of the France Ô channel, the appearance of quotas for overseas audiovisual content for the first time in France, the gradual disappearance of windows reserved for independent works in favor of commercial works, and the rise of extremism make it very difficult and too uncertain to achieve distribution on the French territory. The solution would be to create films systematically in French and English or Spanish. Luc Besson and several French animation studios work that way. Especially since it’s difficult to dub a film into another language once it is released, because there’s no more budget available. So there are many reasons to do it during production and maximize the chances of the film being broadcast everywhere. But many investors still refuse to finance projects that aren’t shot in French, thus condemning the film to remain trapped in France. We are truly trapped.
One area for improvement is the ability of our local cinema industry to capture the genres that generate the most money: horror, scary, thriller, fantasy. These genres don’t need stars, are inexpensive to shoot, and sell very well internationally. But our industry remains stuck in historical film, drama, comedy, and documentaries. These genres are difficult to export, even if they seem more "noble" than entertainment cinema. Making genre films would make it possible to multiply productions because it would create a demand. Because for the moment, Caribbean films are initiatives, proposals, but the demand for Caribbean films is not yet there to boost the industry.
A second point that I observe is the live-action shot cinema showing some kind of artistic discrimination against animation cinema. As if animation was less noble than film. This is a marked tendency in the French-speaking world as well as in the English-speaking world. However, cartoons can do many things that real-life cinema cannot do for lack of means. I hope this is a trend that will disappear in the future.
Do you think a Cariwood (Caribbean Hollywood) will come to life in this 21st century?
If we dive in selling movie genres, probably yes. That’s how Korean horror cinema has become more visible. Hong Kong has made a name for itself thanks to action films. Nollywood made its mark with its low-budget films. They played on quantity, and in the end, this quantity made it possible to generate quality products. We clearly have a card to play with genres if we want a Cariwood.
The dandyism of the film industry is a serious positioning error. We cannot make "noble cinema" that doesn't sell, that doesn't stand out. And that's what the majority of filmmakers is doing right now. The problem with "noble" cinema is that the international public will always prefer big international actors, hot topics that affect everyone, special effects or big-budget sets that only Hollywood knows how to do well. In the meantime this same audience is much more broad-minded when it comes to genres. No one expects to see Denzel Washington in a horror or fantasy film. People expect to be afraid, to be anxious or to have an exciting experience. And it’s something we can actually do without blowing up budgets. If you don't blow up budgets, it means you can continue to produce even in times of economic crisis.
We need to rethink our positioning in the world cinema. Genres adapt to all cultures. And fear, anxiety and fantasy have no borders. Why not a "Caribbean Fantasy" or "Caribbean Thriller" section in Netflix in the 21st century? The reason the CNC got into genre film grants is that the same organization took a 180-degree turn and decided to focus on commercial works when it was actually created for the opposite reason. If even the gatekeepers of "noble cinema" are changing their ways because of the looming crisis, what are we waiting for to evolve, too?
Is there a work or an artist from the Caribbean that you would like to recommend to us?
There are many works and artists that I could recommend. That being said, if I had to choose only one, for one work, I would say "Celflux". It's an Afrofuturist Trinidadian series that is currently in production and has been making quite a bit of noise over the past year. And I can’t wait to see the whole work finished (Episode 1 is available on Youtube).
As for an artist, I’d recommend Kenia Mattis from the ListenMi animation studio in Jamaica. She won the Best Concept Award at the Kingstoon 2019 Animation Festival for an animation series "the adventures of Kam Kam" that they are preparing and I think she and her studio will make a lot of noise in the future.
Bonus: What comes to your mind when you hear/read the word Karukerament ?
Karukéra is the original name of Guadeloupe. So it seems to me that Karukerament means "Guadeloupean vision".
Thank you again Alain Bidard. You can follow him on social media: @angelking144 (Twitter) , @alainbidard (Instagram), @battledreamchronicle (Facebook)
For more info on the “Battledream Chronicle” film, you can check out the official site : www.battledream.com