Join Villa Albertine and Alliance Française Atlanta for a screening of the documentary “Claude McKay: Wandering the World”, directed by Matthieu Verdeil
Production Cinétévé France, 52 minutes, 2025
This screening will be in French with English subtitles.
SYNOPSIS:
At the crossroads of black literary consciousness and political struggle, Claude McKay’s ideas have laid the foundation for major literary schools of thought, including Negritude.
Proud vagabond with both a bohemian lifestyle and strong political commitments, chameleon with a magnetic personality, he roamed the four corners of the globe: New York’s literary milieu, the Parisian aristocracy, Russia’s communist intelligentsia, and the black diasporas in the port of Marseille.
A huge range of playing fields where he forged bonds with some of the great names of his time, from George Bernard Shaw to W.E.B Du Bois, Trotsky and more. Sustained by his many and varied encounters and experiences on several continents, he developed a radical philosophy that was ahead of his time. Recounting the life of Claude McKay means recounting the life of a politically committed poet with a singular outlook.
The film will recount the remarkable life of a key figure in African-American literature, exploring some of the most important artistic and political aspirations of the early 20th century, including black pride, Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance, while portraying Claude McKay’s path over four continents.
A complete immersion in the 1920s and 1930s, with a visual identity inspired by the Harlem Renaissance and narration buoyed by jazz music that will bring Claude McKay and the people around him to life.
Learn more about the film HERE
WATCH THE TRAILER:
Doors open at 6:30pm
Movie starts at 7:15pm
After the movie, we invite the audience to stay and engage in a Q&A with the director Matthieu Verdeil
ABOUT CLAUDE McKAY
@ Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
His poem “If We Must Die” made McKay an iconic figure of the Harlem Renaissance, the African American cultural movement of the 1920s. A writer and lifelong traveler, he left a segregated United States to journey across Europe at the dawn of the 20th century, capturing the atmosphere of the cities he lived in and the social movements he encountered.
In 1923, McKay arrives in Paris; from 1924 to 1928, he lived in Marseille, which became the inspiration for his novels Banjo and Romance in Marseille. From Toulon to Strasbourg, via Douarnenez, he moved easily between working-class circles and literary communities.
His literature from the margins, driven by a raw and uncompromising style, gives voice to dockworkers and the dispossessed. In particular, it depicts the cosmopolitan, working-class life of Marseille. The freedom with which McKay moved through his time, living first as a journalist and then as a writer, is remarkable.
Without taboo, he addressed all forms of sexuality. And when he took on the question of race, he did so more from a social perspective than a purely communal one. A forerunner of the writers of négritude, his originality and universal outlook make him a strikingly relevant figure today.
McKay, one of the architects of an emerging transatlantic Black consciousness paved the way for Aimé Césaire, James Baldwin, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
© R. Arnaud
MATTHIEU VERDEIL is a film director, producer, and artistic project designer. He has directed artist portraits, including that of Abraham Poincheval, as well as historical documentaries (an educational series on World War II in 2020, Claude McKay in 2021, Varian Fry in 2023, among others). He created and coordinates the McKay Years: 100 Years Later (2023–2028). He is the director of A7production.
This event is hosted by Villa Albertine and the Alliance Française of Atlanta
