Fifty years ago, overcoming obstacles and prejudices, a handful of black creators proudly claiming the name of "Nègres" managed to bring together in the same spirit many artists and writers from all the black lands of the globe. In September 1956, the first Congress of Black Writers and Artists took place at the Sorbonne. In the gallery Alioune Diop, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Richard Wright. In the room, Claude Lévi-Strauss, René Depestre, Édouard Glissant, James Baldwin. Picasso signs the poster for the event. This film tells how and why such an event could see the light of day, how and why the authorities of the time - from France of the Fourth Republic to America and the USSR - did everything to disrupt this congress, to denigrate its conclusions, to stifle its scope. By its importance, such an event has left us its share of images, documents, interviews and photographs, even if history has conscientiously concealed them in the replicas of its memory. This film reconstructs the puzzle. The last participants in these three days, still alive, brought their testimonies and these interviews constituting the very basis of the story.
