Women in Resistance: a feminist film festival

In September 2003, the initial Festival “ Women in Resistance ” was organized around the theme “ Women’s Resistance to War ”.

In September 2004, we met again to pursue the theme “ Women’s Resistance to Capitalism ”.

In these two festivals, we addressed and explored the collective space women have in a world under the siege of capitalism, as they have in countries in a state of war. War, capitalism…. tools in the hands of patriarchy to maintain the oppression of women.

We discussed both current and familiar struggles, but we also highlighted far away and past feminist struggles that are too often ignored or forgotten because they happened so long ago or take place across the world.

It is these forgotten realities, these silences, these lapses of memory in history that propelled us in organizing the 3rd festival, in September 2005: "Feminist solidarity(ies) and transmission(s)".

The 4th festival, September 2006: "Women in Resistance to the feminine ideal"

Ideal: 1: a standard of perfection, beauty, or excellence 2: one regarded as exemplifying an ideal and often taken as a model for imitation 3: an ultimate object or aim of endeavor. Websters

 Ideal, idealized, THE Woman, who sacrifices herself and is rewared with a medal for the family, care-giving, devotion, purity, for being veiled, the good little girl, the top model, the sex bomb, the perfect assistant, mother courage, the sister, the virgin...She is ideal, therefore unreal. She is the reflection in a mirror, the retouched image on the magazine cover.

Subjugated to this image, she is idolized.

Imprisoned in these deceptive roles, in what others wish, dispossessed of herself, woman is worshiped in her subjugated roles, for the beauty of her body.

If she strays just slightly from this ideal reflection, she passes through the looking glass and becomes the bitch, the slut, the bad mother... the one who deviates from the norm (the witch), who breaks away, who ‘loses it’ (hysterical), who says no, who refuses, who turns down (the lesbian)...

Caught between these two sides of this distorting mirror, how can women assert their individuality, their will, their desire...? What possibilities are there for resistance to these mechanisms, as manipulative as they are devastating?

How is one no longer a role-model, but becomes a being whose ideas, art, activism impact society?

It’s true that the role-models of the mother and the whore might seem obsolete to us today, no longer valid. They have in fact lost some of their validity thanks to the struggles of feminists and to the progress of women. Certain societies have changed with women having the right to education, to vote, to work without the permission of the husband, the possibility of contraception and abortion, to control one’s body.... and destiny.

But aren’t the old models still active, perhaps less visible but still in place, and now coming back in force in the hands of patriarchal religions and societies.... as well as in the hands of marketing, for the economy and advertising?

The sexism of language and the hypocrisy of the ‘male gaze’ define us. Fairytales and song lyrics, movies, job orientation, institutions, religions or psychoanalysis... don’t they all continue harping on the familiar sexist models, using the same old clichés?

Each society promotes whichever idealized model of the woman that they need to be in power, to control, to impose their ideology or to make profits.

Here the motivation is economical. The new super-woman of capitalist societies is a beautiful, active, perfect mother, and she’s necessarily thin and always young, this unattainable model fuels a constant market of new products as ‘ordinary’ women try to reach this ideal, becoming compulsive buyers in this futile pursuit. While the new whore shown on glossy pages gives men free license to their fantasies, with the offer to sublimate these in redemptive consumerism. What used to be the (un)dressed slut in satin has now become the current sex symbol (un)covered in latex... “Progress” in our societies pushes women to leave their stuffy homes, to come out in the limelight and display themselves across the billboards of our cities, and to consume more actively to fuel the economy.

If women are uncovering themselves in one place, others are covering themselves up somewhere else... A fabric that is becoming heavier and

darker transforms women into ghost-like silhouettes grazing the dilapidated walls... to the benefit of whom? How does this ideal of purety, as inaccessible as the others, benefit women? In all cases, their being idealized, shuns women aside... Of course the rational is to protect them... protect their purety, their fragile nerves, these weaker beings that society must protect... protecting her against society itself and its propensity to vice...protecting women to remain women.

What bigger shame is there than to lose one’s feminine identity, one’s sweet, pure self! The recent commentaries regarding the torturer Lynndie England were not so much appalled by her crimes against humanity but by the inconceivable fact that these were actually committed by a woman. Violence is conceivable, and in certain cases rewarded, when it is done by men. But a woman committing violence is unimaginable. The woman is no longer a women, but a monster. This is just an extreme example of how women are confined by society’s roles and clichés. To idealize women to render them invisible, to infantilize women to subjugate them: to make their diversity and individuality disappear...

Though it has been fo ages women have been resisting and transgressing: they wanted to learn, to work, to protest, to drive a car or navigate a plane, wear pants, be athletic, make films and be political... to be who they want to be and asserting themselves. Real, not idealized, women have died in their struggle. For example, Olympe de Gouges, who was guillotined shortly after the revolution for defending the cause of women prohibited to participate in public assemblies and being forced back into the sphere of the home; or another example is Emily Davisson, the suffragist, who threw herself in kamikaze under the hooves of royal carriage horses in the name of women’s rights... all these women in resistance have been ridiculed, and put down by society... Giving women the right to vote could lead to their downfall and the dissolution of the family. The same tune again during feminist movement in the ‘70s: hysterical bitches, witches, not real women.

Resistance here, resistance in other places.... Women have always done it, asserting their individuality and their diversity that society dismisses; and taking the risk of no longer being considered a woman. This year, the festival will explore, through different times and places, to discover the hidden and tortuous paths women have taken to affirm thelselves.

Whether women are struggling against sexist publicity or religious bans, resisting the beauty norms of the sex bomb, resisting in all different ways, from visible radical activism to subtle subversion in the private sphere...the artistic expressions of resistance against the feminine ideal are numerous... one just has to look outside the mainstream circuits, to see differently, to look unencumbered by society’s norms.. importantly not to believe when told we’re no longer at that point (?!)...

.... two steps forward, three steps backwards is the pace that society is moving along on the issue....

To contact us: info@resistancesdefemmes.org
Association Résistances de femmes
62, rue de Reuilly
75012 Paris
France

"Women in Resistance" takes place in the outskirts of Paris at:
Centre culturel Jean Vilar
1, rue Paul Signac
94110 Arcueil
France