Documentaries, comics, exhibitions… It’s time to discover Joséphine Baker before entering the Panthéon

Do you really know Joséphine Baker? She will be the sixth woman to join the Pantheon this Tuesday, November 30. Franco-American artist, black and bisexual, a great figure in the music hall, resistant, and above all a free and committed woman, the story of Joséphine Baker deserves to be known to all at this historic moment. Luckily, the artist’s whimsical and fantastic life has inspired many books, documentaries and podcasts …

If you know Josephine Baker’s name without really knowing who she really was, or just want to learn more, 20 minutes offers you ideas here for a little catch-up session …

The documentary Josephine Baker, first black icon, on Arte

Available on Arte.tv, this fifty-minute documentary recounts the oh-so-tumultuous life of Joséphine Baker. Nourished by extracts from her memoirs, interviews and numerous photo and video archives, we find her overflowing with energy as in full disillusionment.

As well in uniform alongside Martin Luther King, or in full performance simply dressed in front of a conquered crowd, the gap is large but allows to reflect the life of this deeply committed artist.

The graphic novel Josephine Baker, by Catel & Bocquet

“Shedding light on the great forgotten ones in history” is what the designer Catel and the screenwriter José-Louis Bocquet have been working on for several years now. In this 568-page comic from Casterman editions, it is the star of the music hall that they have chosen to honor, after two previous works dedicated to Olympes de Gouges and Kiki de Montparnasse.

the cover and a comic strip – Casterman 2016 Bocquet / Catel

And the least we can say is that the authors had hit the nail on the head. It was in 2016, well before the announcement of the pantheonization of Josephine Baker, that they saw in her a personality who deserved to be known and recognized. The result of almost three years’ work, this black and white graphic novel is based on numerous archives, photos and videos, allowing the life of this great lady to be retraced with pencils.

The radio show Jazzafip Club, Tuesday November 30 from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

On the air this time, it is Fip, eclectic radio station of the Radio France group, which will dedicate its evening of November 30 to the music hall artist, and will draw him “a musical and human portrait”.

During this hour and a half, the program “where all the jazz intertwines” will evoke the role of dance in “the craze of the French for jazz, the contribution of this culture to the great French repertoire”, or ” the jazz variations of certain songs by Joséphine Baker ”.

The exhibition Baker over the water, until December 31 in Paris 13

Who thought you couldn’t do an exhibition in a swimming pool? Well… maybe not quite “in” a swimming pool, we grant you… But from the end of November, it is rather in “the enclosure” of the Joséphine Baker swimming pool in the 13th arrondissement. in Paris that an exhibition tribute to the one that will soon be at the Pantheon will be held.

exhibition poster
exhibition poster – Baker Pool

In an exhibition which will retrace the history of the diva through an “iconographic and documentary” section, the work of several artists will also be exhibited, “bringing out the different facets of this colorful character”. Paintings, sculptures, street-art, collage and digital creation will therefore be exhibited, and “visible to swimmers but also to passers-by on the quays”, specify the organizers.


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