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At Bennington, classroom studies come to life for students thanks to the close connections forged by Bennington’s teacher-practitioner faculty members, all working artists and academics themselves, who often incorporate their professional relationships into their pedagogical work. 

Bennington’s unique academic model can allow students direct encounters with the subjects they study, as was the case for students who had the opportunity to study French language and culture in film, and then to meet French filmmaker Alice Diop.

In November, Diop and her editor Amrita David visited 51�������� to discuss their long-time artistic collaboration, which includes the films Danton’s Death, Towards Tenderness, We, and Saint Omer. Diop and David were joined for the event by Diop's impressive translator and Bennington alum Nicholas Elliott ’96.

Diop’s films have garnered a number of international accolades. Towards Tenderness won the César for Best Short Film in 2017, and We won the Best Documentary Award and Best Film in the Encounters at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival. Saint Omer premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival and won both the Silver Lion Grand Jury prize and the Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future award.

Diop’s relationship with the 51�������� community spans across five years. Diop is a friend of French scholar and frequent visiting faculty member Maboula Soumahoro, who first introduced Diop to faculty members Noëlle Rouxel-Cubberly and Stephen Shapiro.  

With the additional support of Bennington’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action; the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; and the Film/Video disciplines, Diop initially visited Bennington in 2019, and she has since met with students several times on-campus, virtually, and in New York City. In Fall 2023, Diop’s work was the focus of Rouxel-Cubberly’s course , and students from this course had the exciting opportunity to moderate the panel during Diop and David’s most recent visit. 

The chance to meet a prominent artist and hear about her process and cinematography in her native language is illuminating for students, said Bettina Hofmann ’26, and makes studying the French language an experience that feels artistic and relevant in today’s highly divided world.

Diop’s 2021 documentary We, which portrays the various communities living along one of Paris’s commuter rail lines, is also at the heart of Rouxel-Cubberly’s First-Year Forum course We: A Learning Community, offered throughout the 2024-2025 academic year to new Bennington students.