Decolonizing the imaginary

Round table chaired by Richard Peña, Columbia University, with :

• Agnès Spiquel, President of the Société des Études Camusiennes
• Raoul Peck, filmmaker and writer
• Amos Gitaï, architect and film-maker

Biographies

Richard Peña

Richard Peña has been at Columbia since 1989, becoming full time in 1996 and being named Professor of Professional Practice in 2003; from 2006 - 2009 was a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. Mr. Peña has also served as the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival from 1988 to 2012. At the Film Society, he has organized retrospectives of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Aldrich, Gabriel Figueroa, Ritwik Ghatak, Kira Muratova, Youssef Chahine, Yasujiro Ozu, Carlos Saura and Amitabh Bachchan, as well as major film series devoted to African, Chinese, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Korean, Japanese Soviet and Argentine cinema. He is also currently the co-host of Channel 13's weekly Reel 13.

Agnès Spiquel

Agnès Spiquel is Professor Emeritus of French Literature and President of the Société des Études Camusiennes. For many years, she has devoted herself to the life and work of Albert Camus: in addition to books, symposia and articles, she took part in the publication of his Œuvres complètes in the new Pléiade edition (2008). She is now working more on the contexts of his life and work, particularly in Algeria: with Christian Phéline, she has published Camus et l'impossible Trêve civile by Charles Poncet (Gallimard, 2015) and Camus militant communiste. Alger 1935-1937 (Gallimard, 2017); she presented the texts of several Algerian authors on Camus under the title, Alger 1967, Camus, un si proche étranger (Alger, Hibr, 2018). In contact with researchers and Camus enthusiasts around the world, she often gives lectures to a wide range of audiences.