Guest post by Julie Le Hegarat.
The film Speak Up (Ouvrir la voix in French) opens with women talking about the event that first made them realize they were Black. These shared Fanon-like events set the tone for the rest of the film: what does it mean to be a Black woman in countries like France and Belgium, two places where they are constantly surveilled and monitored while also invisibilized? Speak Up is a documentary committed to exploring the specificities of the gendered experience of Black women. It gives a platform for Black women to speak up, on their own terms, and to reclaim the narrative.
In France, it’s been traditionally challenging to have discussions about race in the public space. For example, contrary to the United States, it is illegal to collect data on race and ethnicity. The word “race” has even been banned from the French constitution. In the absence of a critical language on race and racism, it has been difficult to dismantle the structures of oppression. To this effect, filmmaker Amandine Gay’s work — her films, writing, activism, and research — aims to decenter whiteness and decolonize the mind. Trained in sociology, both in France and in Canada, Gay holds the critical tools to put in conversation different approaches and methodologies to the analysis of the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class.
Gay has had her own experience with being silenced. With a personality larger than life and an unbridled creativity, she always knew she wanted to be seen and heard, a desire that first led her to pursue acting. But after a few disappointing castings, she was hit by the truth of racism in French society: Black women characters in French films are traditionally stereotyped secondary roles, poor and bound to affect an “African accent.” In the absence of fair representation, Gay decided to create her own characters and took up writing. But then again, she was confronted with an industry more than reluctant to fund films showcasing a wider variety of experiences. Eventually, Gay seized the camera and started working on the documentary Speak Up in 2013, supported by producer, editor, and sound engineer Enrico Bartolucci.
To carry on the project, Amandine first met with forty-five women, conducting preliminary interviews before selecting the twenty-four women we see on screen. In order to build a relationship of trust, Amandine would invite these women over to her house and did not hesitate to insert herself onscreen to create a real dialogue. That’s because Gay wants you to sit with these women. Redefining the tradition of talking head documentaries, she framed all her interviewees in close-up shots — making it impossible for her audience to look away from the women onscreen. Moreover, the scenes of staged performances show the actresses at work as they read Virginie Despentes’ feminist manifesto King Kong Theory and the classical tragedies of Jean Racine. This time, they act on their own terms and take control of their own representation.
Released in 2017, Speak Up was the catalyst for intersectional conversations on gender and race, and what it means to be a Black woman in the public space. Gay has also paved the way for wider explorations of Afropean identities in France and Belgium. For example, as a Black, queer, pansexual woman, she is attentive to include a variety of gender expressions and sexualities. In addition, Muslim populations have been increasingly stigmatized in France. Public debates and legislation on Islam in France have fostered a climate of intensified Islamophobia, especially targeting women. As a counterreaction, Gay made sure to include expressions of spirituality and religion to also amplify feminist Muslim voices. From her own experience as a writer who has also prefaced the French translations of bell hooks’ books, Gay knows the importance of a practice based in care. To this effect, she makes a point to use her documentaries as starting points for discussions with her audience — to educate but also to create communities. The impact of Speak Up has been considerable. Inspired by the film, a collective of sixteen Black French actresses published a collection of essays narrating their own experiences of discrimination and racism in the film industry. They also staged public events in protest, including at the Cannes Film Festival.
A meticulous artist, Amandine Gay is also a researcher who has devoted her academic work to the consequences of colonial history, and more recently to international adoption and race. This research has culminated in her latest documentary, A Story of One’s Own, in which Gay met with French adoptees, often racialized, who were born in countries abroad. As a transracial adoptee herself, Gay has published a book at the crossroads of autobiography and essay, akin to the genre of autoethnography, called Une Poupée en chocolat (which has yet to be translated into English).
Ouvrir la voix (Speak Up) will be screened at IU Cinema on February 21. Filmmaker Amandine Gay and producer Enrico Bartolucci are scheduled to be present for a conversation moderated by Dr. Elena Guzman.
On February 23, Amandine Gay will also be giving a lecture entitled “Practicing Intersectionality and Being Actively Antiracist: Working towards equality and social justice is a dirty job — are you still up for it?” at the Dogwood Room of Indiana Memorial Union.
Julie Le Hegarat is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at IU Bloomington. Her current project focuses on cannibal women in film and literature from a postcolonial perspective. She makes short films, video essays, and she participated in the UNDO Collaborative Studio with UnionDocs. She is also one of the programmers for the Mutoscope Short Film Festival in France.