Cinema
Femmes aux yeux ouverts
Anne-Laure Folly · 1994
Synopsis
Women from Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and Benin talk about their lives, in seven chapters: excision, forced marriage, AIDS, struggle, survival, the economy and politics. The film opens on a young woman who stares into the camera and recites a poem according to which a good wife obeys her husband, cannot read and must not have her eyes open; it then shows women who carry the survival of their families without having a voice in decisions, and the efforts they themselves make to educate themselves and organise.
Context
The documentary, fifty-two minutes long, was shot in French in four countries, produced by Amanou production, with cinematography by Jean-Louis Penez and editing by Sylvie Allombert, and distributed in the United States by California Newsreel with English subtitles; the Cinéma du réel showed it in 1996. Its director said she had wanted to show African women able to step straight into the twenty-first century. Alice Walker praised the courage it takes to look squarely at the real condition of women and to speak about it.
Who it is for
Fifty-two minutes. Nothing is required to follow it, except to accept that the film lets the women it films speak without interrupting them.
Prizes and reception
Silver medal at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival in 1994, and praised by the American novelist Alice Walker.
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