The Foreigner’s Home: Toni Morrison at the Louvre

The late Jonathan Demme, who directed a 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison's Beloved, served as executive producer for this collage-style documentary about the author's 2006 exhibition at the Louvre in Paris. Morrison says that the title—"The Foreigner's Home"—carries a double meaning, both as a meditation on the foreigner's home ("memory and ancestry") and as a statement that the foreigner is home ("citizenship and belonging"). The exhibition featured artists, such as street poet Hocine Ben, responding to works in the Louvre, like Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa. Morrison also invited choreographers, video artists, musicians, and filmmakers, including cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Killer of Sheep director Charles Burnett, to elaborate on the theme. Events took place both in and outside of the venue, such as a slam poetry reading featuring the children of immigrants. Co-directors Rian Brown and Geoff Pingree combine footage of the exhibition with hand-painted animated sequences and a conversation between Morrison and Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat concerning foreigners and refugees. To Morrison, these concepts collided in the wake of 2005's Hurricane Katrina: she believes that the government treated wealthy white landowners in Florida like residents and the working-class black people of Louisiana like strangers. She also talks to Danticat about a childhood in which she lived in an integrated community in Ohio followed by a segregated community in Washington D.C., giving her insights into inequality at an early age. This relatively brief documentary takes on far more topics than it can explore in depth, but offers plentiful food for thought about the relationship between art and politics, belonging and estrangement. A strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)