PARIS INTERNATIONAL
LESBIAN & FEMINIST FILM FESTIVAL
Quand les lesbiennes se font du cinéma
The organizing team, through self-adopted philosophy and financial necessity, remains completely volunteer. We're talking about dozens and dozens of women here, who work together and who have taken over from one another over the past fifteen years. It's something of a miracle: there is no hierarchy, no spokeswoman, and typically only scorn for us in press. Well, too bad! All that matters is that there are lots of us, and that we can get together for this event once a year, every year, to see each other and ourselves in the auditoriums and on the big screen.
And so this year, we affirm our presence in the magnificent Trianon, with a second auditorium in la Halle Saint-Pierre for debates and additional screenings. Having access to these venues is another miracle, because even with the grant, it is virtually impossible to find a space big enough given our limited budget (and, of course, our seriously threatening sexual habits).
What a wonderful fifteenth year. Wonderful for us as organizers. Wonderful for those of you who come every year. Wonderful for those of you who are here for the first time. Thanks lesbians! Thanks women film-makers, so beautiful and so good! Thanks Paris! We're here, and we're here to stay.
The festival in figures: 15 years old, 2 screens in the heart of Gay Paree, 1 debating/meeting/screening room nearby, plus the Folie's Pigalle (also nearby) for our 15th birthday bash!!!
80 films from 19 different countries; 9 scheduled chances to meet the filmmakers, and plenty of impromptu ones, too! 17 artists' works on view and 1 great women's band, by the name of Anatomie Bousculaire, to open the festivities, followed by Do I Love You? (by Lisa Gornick), the first feature-length, non-documentary lesbian film from GB in over 10 years! And it's just one of the six feature-length fictions this year.
Loads of women to learn about, read, listen to or remember, on screen or in the flesh, from African American lesbian-feminist poet-fighter Audre Lorde, a stylised Petra von Kant in The Politics of Fur, one savvy Savoy princess in Née sous absence, Albanian "virgins", South African activists, Monique Wittig and her guerrillères, the legendary Elula Perrin, French feminists, Radical Harmonies, an Australian PWA, 2 German-Jewish lesbian grandmothers and dykes marching all over the world!
10 rules to Korean lesbian survival, Dayna Mc Leod's return with a less ironic, more sexually realistic take on Womyn's Studies. History Lessons, and sex lies and videotape about everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask (from dildos to mermaids and back!)!
Three little girls' questions about why their uncle is turning into their aunt, plus poetry, performance art and personal stories from girls who were born boys, vice versa or in between the 2... will lead us to a debate about the relationship between the trans and lesbian movements.
From Hollywood: 5 lesbians live in The Complex, 4 teen 007's are D.E.B.S., Zoey will go to great lengths for One Kiss, and more... From all over, kids with 2 mums; teens, parents and coming out are the stuff of You 2, Peeling, Blow, and Lesbian Love Bites...
Documentaries from Trinidad, the USA, Nepal, East Timor and more... And the first-ever lesbian feature from China. Plus 2 women, 4 cats and 6 months in Salt the Blade, and Crevetten describes the moving connection between a 19-year-old nurse, Luce, and her 93-year-old patient, Rosa. And let's not forget Girl King, the one-of-a-kind story of a very special pirate queen...
Lots of French films this year, and after Caroline Fourest in 2002, who will win the screenplay prize in 2003? Stay tuned!
The Programming Committee 2003