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33e Festival International de Films de Femmes, Créteil, 25 mars–3 avril 2011 (Web site: ; Newsletter: ). In 2011, the organizers of the festival may have bent to pressure to include more French directors because, although their numbers were still lacking in the feature competition, more competed in the Shorts division—an encouraging fact since so many filmmakers start out with shorts. Additionally, a section entitled “La French Touch” (yes, in English, although that decision was not explained) was incorporated into the festival, and was justified in the catalogue as follows: “La rentrée cinématographique a vu se multiplier la sortie des premiers films de jeunes réalisatrices françaises, signe que le désir des femmes de faire des images a gagné sur celui d’être seulement regardées” (46). It was heartening to see that the FIFF recognized the shift from object to subject for women in film, although it might have been nice to see them recognize the leaps made during (at least) the last three decades, rather than giving the impression it was a new phenomenon. However, this oversight in the introduction of “La French touch” was offset by the quality of the film and the roundtable discussion that followed. The film, Le deuxième cinéma, recognized the strides made toward a different cinema, a cinema of difference, in portraying “une autre histoire du cinéma qui prend en compte les problématiques du genre, du statut des femmes, de la lutte pour l’égalit é entre les hommes et les femmes” (46). Among the presenters of the film and participants in the roundtable were some of the greats in the industry in France, representing various roles in the process of creating a film (e.g., filmmakers, directors of photography, scriptwriters, editors, actresses, professors at FEMIS). Along with Jackie Buet, the festival director, were Valérie Donzelli, Nicole Fernandez Ferrer, Laurence Ferreira Barbosa, Élise Girard, Agnès Godard, Tonie Marshall, Maria de Medeiros, Claire Simon, Agnès Varda, Anne Villacèque, and Tami Williams. The CNC (Centre National du Cinéma) even collaborated in the section and sent a representative to inform the audience of the forms of financial aid available. Awards to women are increasing somewhat in numbers, and the panel gives more detailed comments than in the past on the weaknesses found in the projects. However, since a unanimous vote among the committee members is required to fund a project, that stacks the cards in favor of straightforward, noncontroversial projects. The CNC representative also elided the fact that a disproportionate number of projects funded are still those by men. FIFF remains faithful to French projects in the Avant-première sections. This year, one of the films screened was Belleville-Tokyo, by Élise Girard. Her first feature , this film is a little gem about a woman who refuses to accept the role of abandoned victim when her partner leaves her abruptly for another woman. Concurrently, she makes no excuses for his behavior to her friends, and later gives no trite rationalizations when he reappears and she agrees to take him back. THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 85, No. 6, May 2012 Printed in U.S.A. REVIEWS Film edited by Michèle Bissière 1150 The proportion of French women among the feature fiction competition remains drastically disappointing. This year, only one film made the cut: Escalade, by Charlotte Silvera. Silvera is well-known to Créteil participants. Her first feature film, Louise l’insoumise (1984), winner of the Georges Sadoul prize, explored the life and preoccupations of an adolescent girl recently immigrated to Paris from Tunisia with her Jewish parents, and it shed light on cultural and religious differences. Other films by Silvera previously shown at Créteil were Prisonnières (1988), a fictionalized documentary about women in prison possibly influenced by Agnès Varda, and C’est la tangente que je préfère (1998), a film about a fifteenyear -old girl’s path toward sexual awakening and disappointment. In Escalade, as the catalogue tells us, Silvera “entraîne le public dans un huis clos diabolique” (17). Just as she articulated the claustrophobic environment of the prison in her earlier documentary, Silvera...

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