Women need to tell their own stories in movies
Clotilde Richalet is a photographer on the red carpet. For 14 years he has worked in the press service of the Cannes Film Festival, one of the most important in Europe and the world.
There he arrived for a student exchange in 2002. “We are five official photographers. We do protocol, red carpet, press conferences and we cover the entire festival, ”he told this newspaper in Quito, where he opened at the N24 Gallery, in La Floresta, his most recent artistic project, in the context of the Equis Film Festival Feminist held until December 1.
In Cannes you can’t interact with artists or know how they think, much less for a selfie. “I don’t have time to talk to people, it’s a strict system, as if it were military. We see the artists, we take the photos and we continue our work, because they have continuous activities ”.
In her search for an exchange with the human being through her art, this French photographer born in 1980 toured several countries in Asia to portray women from that continent.
But the idiomatic difference was an obstacle. That’s why he just took pictures in the streets. His interest in women’s issues and cinema had not been fully satisfied at this point.
“I am interested in understanding the position of women in this continent, particularly from the cinema.”
In his opinion, women should be taken into account in this industry because their sensitivity is different from that of men. “Women need to tell their own stories,” says the artist.
It is also the criterion that, at any given time, motherhood influences the issue of parity in this area at the regional level.
With these precepts, he makes the decision to travel to the Bogotá Audiovisual Market (BAM) festival, in Colombia, with the motivation that in Cannes, in 2018, 82 women on the red carpet protested for justice and against inequality in the film industry world.
Cate Blanchett, president of the jury that year, along with Ava DuVernay, Lea Seydoux and singer Khadja Nin, led this silent demonstration before the premiere of Girls of the Sun, by Eva Husson (1977, France).
The 82 evidenced the number of women directors selected in the official competition since the start of the Cannes Film Festival in 72 years, compared with 1,645 films made by men in the same period.
In 70 years of the Cannes Film Festival, only one woman had won the Palme d’Or, the biggest prize of this event, in 1993. Jane Champion, director of The Piano Lesson, had to share the award with Chinese director Chen Kaige . This is how the idea of traveling through 10 countries in the Americas arises in Clotilde Richalet, to make his project 82 Women by a Woman: Portraits of South American Cinema (82 women for a woman: portraits of South American cinema).
“As a woman and as a photographer I felt the need to talk about this problem.” Then she contacted Claudia Triana, director of the BAM, who helped her find the first filmmakers.
Then it was weaving a network that reaches so far more than 320, from makeup artists, art directors, screenwriters, producers, actresses, lighting technicians, to film or festival directors.
Her husband accompanied her on this adventure, which she managed to complete after a trip on the Pan-American Highway since June 2018. The tour lasted for 9 months from Seattle to Ushuaia.
He could take time to contact his protagonists and talk with them for at least half an hour, with his faithful companion. “I left with my Fujifilm xt2 camera, which is a robust and also lightweight digital camera, perfect for the trip, and with high quality light lenses.”
In Ecuador, he was able to portray thirty women of cinema. He says that almost all agreed to her immortalization and only a few apologized because they were out of their country or in the middle of a shoot.
This exhibition, the fifth staff in his career, has been “much deeper.” He has been able to talk to these women in cafes or restaurants. Then take the photos in a quick and discreet session, to capture their essence after the verbal exchange. “They chose how they got; if there was a chair they sat down, or we saw if they could put a hand in one way or another, but we tried to make it quite natural, ”said the artist.
His photographs strip the soul of these women of cinema. They do not appear in manufactured poses or with sumptuous makeup or hairstyles, but the posture, their hands and their eyes convey a message to the public.
The miracle is completed with the phrases that each one wrote to accompany her portrait. “In each photo there is a connection with a personal story, with an attached text where you can know what each one thinks,” says Clotilde Richalet.
She wants to expose her photos around the world and make a book with the images and the text of the interviews. This will help to demonstrate feminist struggles to emancipate also from the world of celluloid in many countries of the region.
https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/cultura/10/mujeres-historias-cine