This event will be held in English.
Co-sponsored by Columbia Global Centers | Paris and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.
When Elaine Mokhtefi published her memoirs, she had been exiled from Algeria for 44 years. Released in 2018 by Verso, the book’s title Algiers, Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers only hints at an extraordinary life shaped by engagement with liberation movements which had captured the global imagination in the 1960s. By sharing her tale of anti-colonial activism – from her friendship with Frantz Fanon, and her work in the Algerian Media Office at the UN at the height of the war against France, to her role in organizing the legendary 1969 Panaf festival, and her work with the Black Panther Party’s International Section in Algiers – Elaine (née Klein), a born New Yorker, struck a chord with a young generation hungry for new political imaginaries. On the wave of the success of her memoirs, in 2019 she was allowed back into Algeria, arriving in time to witness the country’s political awakening, the hirak movement.
In conversation with filmmaker Mila Turajlić (2020-2021 Fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination), Mokhtefi retraces the legacy and lessons of an era. The exchange will be illustrated with clips of material from an upcoming documentary about Elaine, filmed during their recent trip to Algiers, where they revisited important sites, most memorably Frantz Fanon’s house in Blida.
The place
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This event will take place in the Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built at Reid Hall in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.
For nearly 60 years, Columbia University students and faculty have come to study, teach, and pursue their research at Reid Hall, home to Columbia Global Centers | Paris. Nestled in the Montparnasse district, Reid Hall also hosts several other Columbia University initiatives: Columbia Undergraduate Programs, M.A. in History and Literature, GSAPP Shape of Two Cities Program, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. This unique combination of resources is enhanced by our global network whose mission is to expand the University's engagement the world over through educational programs, research initiatives, regional partnerships, and public events.
From graduate and undergraduate courses to webinars attracting audiences worldwide; from executive training to artist residencies, the Paris Center is a hub for scholars, students, and artists who cross both disciplinary and national boundaries alike. Through its public programs, the Center also addresses pressing global issues that are at the forefront of international education and research: agency and gender; climate and the environment; critical dialogues for just societies; encounters in the arts; and health and medical science.
The views and opinions expressed by speakers and guests do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Columbia Global Centers | Paris or its affiliates.
