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1-5 of 5
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Christian Lara is born in Guadeloupe, an island in the french Caribbean. He's considered as "the father of the West Indian cinema". Journalist in France who turned film maker, he has now more than 20 films to his credit, shot in the Caribbean islands, France, Canada, Cameroon, Gabon, Senegal, Tunisia and more.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Songwriter ("Mack the Knife"), composer, pianist, publisher and author, educated at the University of Pennsylvania, the Curtis Institute, and the Acad. der Kuenste in Berlin. He studied with Alexander Siloti, Rosario Scalero, Nadia Boulanger, and Arnold Schoenberg. He was awarded two grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, and one each from the Ford Foundation and the Academy of Arts and Letters. He was awarded a "Page One" from the Newspaper Guild, and received an award from the American Aeronautical Institute. At fifteen, he was a piano soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Serving with the US Army Air Corps in World War II, he later founded Arrow Music, and served as its vice president. He joined ASCAP in 1939, and his chief musical collaborator was Kurt Weill. His song compositions include "Nickel Under the Foot", "The Cradle Will Rock", "Art for Art's Sake", "Francey", "Pirate Jenny", "Barbara's Song", "Army Song", "The Liffey Waltz", "One Kind Word", and "I Wish It So".- Aimé Césaire was born in Basse-Pointe, Martinique. His father, Fernand Elphège, managed a sugar estate, though he was educated as a teacher. His mother, Eléonore, was a seamstress. In order to gain access to better education, his family moved to Martinique's capital, Fort-de-France, where Aimé attended the Lycée Schoelcher. He excelled as a student and was granted a scholarship at age 18 to study in Paris at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he met Léopold Senghor. Along with Léon Damas, Césaire's classmate from the Lycée Schoelcher, Césaire and Senghor founded the student publication L'Etudiant noir, a literary review that focused on black literature from Africa and the West Indies. This publication laid the foundation for the "negritude" movement. Césaire began writing his poem "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal" in 1936, and it was first published in 1939.
In 1937, Césaire married his classmate Suzanne Roussi, with whom he ultimately had four sons and two daughters. The two moved back to Martinique with their first son in 1939, and both took jobs teaching at the Lycée Schoelcher. During this time, Césaire was sent to Haiti as a cultural ambassador, and there he lectured on French poetry. He and his wife founded the literary review Tropiques in 1941, which dealt with Martinican identity. Around this time he also became close friends with French surrealist André Breton, who encouraged Césaire to incorporate surrealism into his writing and political spheres. A member of the communist party, Césaire was elected mayor of Fort-de-France and deputy in the French National Assembly in 1945. He helped to draft the 1946 law that began departmentalization of former French colonies. Césaire maintained his position in the communist party until 1956, when the Soviet Union's suppression of the Hungarian revolution led to his leaving the party. In 1958 he founded the Parti Progressiste Matriniquais, or Martinican Progressive Party. He ultimately retired from French politics in 1993, though he remained mayor of Fort-de-France until 2001 (he had held the position since 1945, minus a short period from 1983-1984). Césaire died on April 18, 2008 at the age of 94.
In trying to conceptualize the impact Césaire had on the country and people of Martinique, perhaps it is easiest simply to look at the number of attendees of his funeral procession in Martinique, united in both mourning Aimé's passing and in celebrating his achievements. A short video of a section of the procession can be found by clicking the link below. - Emile Caserus was born on 13 December 1925 in Sainte-Marie, Martinique, France. He was an actor, known for Sugar Cane Alley (1983). He died on 10 March 1992 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, France.
- Actor
- Composer
Francisco Charles was born on 9 November 1932 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, France. He was an actor and composer, known for Concorde Affaire '79 (1979), Brigade mondaine: Vaudou aux Caraïbes (1980) and Mamito (1980). He died on 18 April 2013 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, France.