Women Are Heroes!

Title of a film we went to see last week. Once a year Cinéplus (who we support regularly through their Arthouse programming every Thursday and the film festival) and Chinon council host a documentary. This year the choice was a piece made in 2009 and was shown at the Cannes Film festival in 2010. The director was the French artist JR, specialising in photography, street art and graffiti. Women Are Heroes was JR's first film and took us into the various worlds of a series of exceptional women.  Exceptional, because the individuals we were introduced to, despite living in extreme poverty, being socially deprived, denied education, facing daily political upheaval, rape and sexual intimidation, tribal and civil warfare - somehow managed to hold themselves and their families together, frequently without the help of a husband. The men had died - meaning either disappeared in its most sinister context or were known to have been killed. The film travelled across different continents and countries  including India, Cambodia, Brazil, Kenya, Liberia, Sudan and into conditions which were extremely challenging, and in which somehow these women and their families survive.

JR. used his artistic skills to develop a photographic project, recording each woman's face, and a shot of their eyes in their home environment. The images were enormous. Posted up in each woman's town or village, they would cover the entire wall of a building, or a roof. The effect was dramatic, cutting through the surrounding squalor, to reveal individuals who for the most part were ignored and forgotten.  

The two film clips in the link show on the one hand, elements from the film and some interviews. The second shows the images as an exhibition in Paris along the Seine in 2009. Response is varied! Many interviewed simply loathed it, particularly when the images begin to fall apart, into tatty, smelly, dirty, ghastly strips of rubbish, which the women of course are surrounded by on a daily basis. It's difficult to find much information about the film. The internet reveals very little. In truth as one of the women said, the photography wasn't actually going to help change their situation, but  she at least no longer felt invisible.