René Vautier, the indomitable
By trade, a filmmaker. For his work, he spent several years in prison. He was hospitalized several times — from gunshots, staged accidents, or riots. “The most censored man in France,” he was called. At twenty-one, he slapped the governor of the French colony in Africa. He had been commissioned to film daily life in the African villages of the colony. France’s glorious civilizing mission was not exactly what he saw — nor what he filmed. After an unexpected inspection of his material, an argument broke out: the colonial governor wanted to tell him what he could or could not film. They argued, and the governor ended up insulting him. Vautier slapped him.
René Vautier is a breath of fresh air. Communist at heart. At heart — meaning devoted to revolutionary experience, not to ideological doctrine, always conservative. He understood his craft as an “instrument of expression” to be placed at the disposal of the voiceless. Many of his images have reached us through a thousand adventures: policemen thrown out of windows, coffins with their mourners, reels of pornographic film. That is to say, thanks to an archipelago of friendships and complicities that have always crossed borders underground. An archipelago of people committed against lies and public meanness. And for different forms of liberation.
Today, the situation remains unresolved. And it is then that René Vautier’s insolence before power, his courage in the face of danger, and his fraternity with friends can come to refresh our memory… about how to confront the world of exploitation, misery, and pain in which we still live.
“Censorship is no longer necessary,” Vautier said at the beginning of this century. “People in the profession know they must censor themselves if they want their work to appear on TV or in cinemas, or to gain any visibility. Self-censorship has become so automatic that it’s almost forgotten.”
Against forgetting. The films, statements, and adventures of René Vautier remind us that following a path of justice against an absurd order sometimes depends on a simple gesture. A slap. Filming what must not be filmed. Asking for help from friends who still dare to look you in the eye. Bearing witness to experience. Letting the concrete lies of the false reconciliation that governs us be seen.
Images erupt upon the restless texture of the sensitivity and perception of every era that has dared to say “enough!” — that has set itself in motion, given itself over to revolt, and decided to change the world by changing itself.
This project aims to revisit and reactivate the work of French filmmaker René Vautier (1928–2015) — one of the earliest, most coherent, and most militant expressions of anti-colonial cinema in Europe.
From his first works, such as the emblematic Afrique 50 (1950)*, Vautier challenged not only the censorship of the French state but also the epistemological structures of colonialism, committing himself to a “cinema of social intervention.” A cinema he later carried everywhere — from anti-colonial and revolutionary struggles in the Global South to workers’ and peasants’ movements in his native Brittany.
This project invites reflection on how images, words, and artistic gestures can contribute to a critique of the atrocious catastrophe being imposed on us as a new reality. Genocide. War. Inner persecution. Borders armed to the teeth. A whole series of fear-based mechanisms built precisely so that nothing inside may move.
Through a series of screenings, conversations, and materials, the project proposes to situate Vautier’s work in dialogue with contemporary perspectives on anti-colonial thought and current struggles against structural violence.
A key aspect is to create a generative space for collaborations and conversations that migrate between different environments and contexts, mixing them and addressing issues from complementary angles.
To recover or recollect images, words, and projects through hybrid events: in-person meetings and online programs organized by OVNI, creating content that can further the research.
The program is part of the project “Art, War, Insoumission: René Vautier the Indomitable”, by Falconetti Peña, Simona Malatesta, and Vicente Barbarroja for OVNI, in collaboration with Sonya Kerfa, Raquel Schefer, and Franco Berardi (Bifo), the la Filmoteca de Catalunya, the Institut Français de Barcelona, the Barcelona Independent Film Festival l’Alternativa, l’Escola Massana, ILCEA4 the University of Grenoble, Lira from Sorbonne_ París, and many others who have supported and helped throughout the research, translation, and conceptual process.
* At twenty-one, René Vautier was already familiar with clandestinity and censorship, having paid for his involvement in the Resistance and his participation in Louis Daquin’s film La Grande Lutte des mineurs (The Great Struggle of the Miners). When he traveled to French West Africa to make a film for the Ligue de l’enseignement, he came face to face with the gap between colonial discourse and the real living conditions of the colonized populations. In just twenty minutes, the filmmaker relentlessly links the rise of capitalism and racist domination. He methodically dismantles the official narrative of a supposedly emancipatory colonization, exposing its underlying logic — determined by the economic interests of colonial states and sustained by violence. A film of great impact, Afrique 50 is also a fundamental historical document, revealing in 1950 facts that remain silenced even today: the emergence of independence movements and their brutal repression.