Ma belle ka di

Ma belle ka di originates from the fascination exerted by Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel by Jean Rhys. Rhys made Bertha Mason, a secondary figure in the novel Jane Eyre, the protagonist of her book. In this video it’s the turn of Christophine Dubois, a new literary figure created by Rhys on the model of her own Martiniquais nanny, to be evoked.

Meetings with an interpreter of local traditions and with a storyteller turn out to be occasions for questioning the meaning of belonging to certain places.

About Ma belle ka di

Ma belle ka evokes the literary figure of Christophine Dubois, Antoinette Mason’s black nanny in Jean Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea. Antoinette is an autobiographical protagonist which redeems the figure of Bertha Mason, Rochester’s insane Creole wife in Jane Eyre. When Antoinette has grown up and faces her unfortunate fate, Christophine is roughly sketched as a protective and mysterious housekeeper, who practices magic. She is also drawn from Rhys’ biography, based on the model of her own nanny. Even Ma belle ka di, the lullaby that Christophine sang during Antoinette’s infancy is the same song that a black woman from Martinique, named Josephine, used to sing to little Jean. Grown old, she still remembered the song well. A tape was recorded in the 1960s of her singing the song, which is now conserved by the University of Tulsa. This recording served as a reference to create the original soundtrack of the video.

Yet despite basing much of the book on the author’s life, Rhys’ Christophine Dubois seemed to me as depthless as Bronte’s Bertha Mason. Thus, I wanted to seek more about Josephine: an impossible task. So, as in a play of mirrors, the Ma belle ka di video continues to create narratives now dealing with the role that memory plays in the construction of personal and collective identity in the Caribbean.

© Cristiano Berti

2024

Dans sa rencontre avec la Martinique, le regard de Cristiano Berti s’est ensuite deplacé de la dimension littéraire vers les sujets du récit tiré de la réalité et de la mémoire.

Il a choisi d’interroger la mémoire ou plus exactement le “rôle de la mémoire” dans la construction et la sauvegarde de l’identité. Un récit “mythologique” de Roland Pavila, artiste martiniquais et l’exploration émotive d’un bâtiment délaissé, avec les mots de la conteuse Yaya encore plus qu’avec le regard, sont le fil conducteur de ce film-documentaire.

excerpt from «An Mémwa Lé Zansèt», Rencontres de l’oralité – 4ème édition. Programmation culturelle & artistique, leaflet, October 2011