France doesn’t have an equivalent word for speaking about “blackness” and has just removed the word “race” from its Constitution. However, a new generation of black French women directors is creating documentaries, news reports, and fiction films about the black experience in all its plurality, from more recent immigration of Africans to France, to intimate searches for genealogical identity in the Caribbean, to feminist and political struggles in today’s troubled times.  Around a selection of films directed by award-winning artists of African descent, this series will explore experiences of mostly female subjects and characters in France, but also in French-speaking Africa and in the diaspora, in the U.S. and the Caribbean. This film series includes a classic film by Ousmane Sembène (Black Girl) and many recent ones, some being shown for the first time in the U.S. Five women directors are travelling from France to be present for the series, and screenings will be followed by discussions with the director, an invited scholar from Columbia, and curator Nora Philippe or special guest moderator Maboula Soumahoro. The selected films and discussions to follow focus on the articulation between film creation and political engagement. “Ouvrir la voix,” as Amandine Gay’s film title says: a pun which means both “speaking up” and “paving the way” – may surely be the motto of this series.