Synopsis
Through fictional reenactments and testimonies, this video demonstrates how women experience rape and all forms of aggression in the street, at home and in the workplace. It explains how fear, humiliation and frustration become part of women’s daily lives, and how all this violence against women in so many ways contributes to their overall oppression.
A word from Tënk
This major yet minimally distributed documentary is the product of a collaboration between two handheld video pioneers who worked in the collectives Vidéo Femmes (Helen Doyle), based in Québec, and Groupe Intervention Vidéo (Hélène Bourgault), based in Montréal, in the 1970s.
Chaperons rouges (1979) is one of Quebec’s first documentaries to address the issue of sexual violence head-on, at a time when the province was consumed with its quest for independence. An audacious film with a hybrid format split between dance performances (Christiane Viens) and gut-wrenching interviews, the two filmmakers invite us to reflect more broadly on the future of the feminist movement. Well before #MeToo, the film’s interviews reveal stories of survival and resilience that resemble the thousands of messages shared by victims on social media as part of that movement. Here, video is used rather than computer keyboards to speak to the urgency of the era and celebrate the women who rose up to break the silence.
Julia Minne
PhD student and programmer
