35e Festival International de Films de Femmes (review)

Film edited by Michèle Bissière 35e Festival International de Films de Femmes, Créteil, 22–31 mars 2013. . The FIFF continues to increase in quality on the pedagogical side that sets it apart from most film festivals, bringing in classes from local junior high and high schools, and continuing the jury composed of high school students, La graine de cinéphage. One of the highlights remains the daily newsletter and video, entirely shot and produced by high school students. Similarly, the pre-release showings and “master classes” remain strong contributions to the festival. The Master Classes afford the opportunity to participate in small group discussions with the filmmaker. The sections in 2013 included Les pionnières du cinéma, honoring the memory of women filmmakers from the first fifty years of the cinema: Alice Guy, Loïs Weber, Frances Marion, Dorothy Arzner, Germaine Dulac, Lotte Reiniger. Another section, Homoparentalité, featured Marie Mandy. This year, she showed her own Nos parents sont gays et c’est pas triste (2003) and J’ai deux mamans by Christine François (2003). Mandy’s film was the first French-speaking documentary to engage the children of lesbian parents,to seek out their opinions and life experiences. J’ai deux mamans sheds light on the legal consequences for the mother who is not the biological parent. Raising their children before the PACS or same-gender marriage law, Marie-Laure had to renounce claims to her children so that Carla could adopt them, then re-file for maternity rights. A series of interviews, especially with the two women, the film is a powerful answer to those who ask why marriage is necessary, especially given the rights accorded by the PACS. Another master class, La liberté de voir, with Québécois filmmaker Helen Doyle, brought another point of view to the European audience. Discussing the lack of support for Québécois films within the Canadian context and even more so for women, she decried the lack of a film school in Québec when she started. Truly a self-taught filmmaker, she reiterated the forbidden subjects for film at the beginning of her thirtyfive -year career: female sexuality, menopause, rape. At the end of the session, the director of FIFF underscored an ongoing primordial strength of festivals—the remarks just heard from Helen Doyle are not written anywhere. Therein lies another critical element of attending film festivals, of chronicling the rich array of showings and activities. The two roundtable sections had particular resonance for the connections between cinema and cultural movements,including political and socio-economic upheavals.One category, L’Europe extrême, a panorama of twenty-five contemporary films, exposed the precarious situation in post-communist Eastern Europe.The second topic,Nouvelles formes du féminisme, followed uncannily the press surrounding the feminist group 190 FRENCH REVIEW 87.4 Reviews 191 Femen. Since the festival was sandwiched between the group’s demonstration against the Pope in Notre-Dame and the one outside the Paris Mosque, the screening of the 2012 documentary Nos seins, nos armes (Nadia El Fani and Caroline Fourest) and the ensuing discussion presaged the coming front page coverage (see Libération from 6 June, among others). Originally from the Ukraine, and beginning their resistance movement against the patriarchy, dictators, and obscurantist religions there, the group is now headquartered in Paris, where they train new members and plan protests. Several members of Femen, their heads adorned with the trademark crown of flowers, fielded questions from the floor, many of which questioned their motives in baring their breasts since they are almost all young and beautiful. Whatever one’s opinion of the movement may be, the film is eloquent, tracing their beginnings, their early and ongoing struggles and targets as well as their training and planning sessions. Coupled with Nos seins was another documentary of a more personal nature. Même pas mal (Nadia El Fani and Alina Isabel Pérez, 2012) follows El Fani’s double combat against Islamists and against her cancer. The Franco-Tunisian artist’s film treats freedom of expression and the artistic, creative, and political struggles made ever more necessary due to continuing obscurantist tendencies. The...