IN CINEMA

DESSERT FOR CONSTANCE (UN DESSERT POUR CONSTANCE)
Sunday, March 31 at 2 PM
Tickets: $15 General Admission / $7 Reduced Price 

Co-presented with The Broodthaers Society of America

Sarah Maldoror, 1981, 61 min.

In 1981 Sarah Maldoror made Un Dessert pour Constance (A Dessert for Constance), a $160,000 medium-length film, based on Maurice Pons’ adaptation of a short story by French writer Daniel Boulanger and co-produced by Antenne 2 and Top Films. The cast included several noted African and French actors as Sidiki Bakaba, Cheik Doukouré, Jean Bouse, and Bernard Haller.

Un Dessert pour Constance depicts, in a somewhat light-hearted manner, the friendship and solidarity among African migrant workers in Paris. Two street sweepers and occasional garbage collectors memorize the recipes of a French cookbook they found in the trash in order to win a TV game show’s cash prize and help a sick comrade return to Africa so he can die in his ancestors’ land. Maldoror’s parable ends tragically with the protagonists’ final words: “The main thing is never to come to work in loneliness and contempt.”

Followed by a discussion Sarah Maldoror’s daughter,  Annouchka de Andrade, and a reception!

The Broodthaers Society of America examines the work of Marcel Broodthaers within the political and cultural context of the United States. America was a great influence on Broodthaers, both directly through his experience of Pop Art and indirectly through his shared interest in the poetics of merchandise, publicity, and the conquest of space. Put another way, the Broodthaers Society provides a forum in which the United States might contemplate itself through the life and work of Marcel Broodthaers.