In the summer of 1951, James Baldwin, one of the twentieth century's most influential artists, visited Leukerbad, a commune in the Upper Valais whose inhabitants, in some cases, had never seen a racialized person before. The simple act of smoking a cigarette in a café, or playing with the children at recess, aroused a vague and bitter mixture of curiosity and fascination around this strange stranger. These experiences fuel the writer's thoughts, which he unfolds throughout the program after writing them down in his eponymous book Stranger in the Village. A work that goes beyond the obvious and penetrates the socio-historical layers of ordinary racism with dazzling lucidity.
Justine Roh