Beatrice a Century
https://www.cinemutins.com/beatrice-un-siecle
Beatrice a Century
by Hejer Charf (97 min. Canada, 2018)
Synopsis
Bice Beatrice Slama, 95 years old, Tunisian, communist, Jewish, feminist, specialist in women's literature. She has been actively involved in the political movements of the twentieth century. She talks about the Tunisian Communist Party and the Jewish and Arab youth who discovered each other in fraternity and love; her struggle for the independence of Tunisia, the forced departure of the Jews, May 68, the adventure at the University of Vincennes. Love, desire, sexuality according to Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras are discussed at length and continue to be hot topics of the day. The history of feminism is told with the words of Christine de Pizan and Hubertine Auclert and through the works of women in cinema, photography, painting, across the centuries. Beatrice, is a life of commitment and knowledge.
The Filmmaker's Note of Intention
"I want you purely Unfaithful/ if I am of Faithful origin /
if I am Jewish, be Arab, / let me love you, /
let us love each other with our two innocent differences" Hélène Cixous
« je te veux purement Infidèle/ si je suis d'origine Fidèle,/
si je suis juive, sois arabe,/ laisse-moi t'aimer, /
aimons-nous avec nos deux innocences différentes,»
We are Tunisians. She is Jewish. I am Muslim. Her committed, generous and learned eyes on the world extend to infinity, to the religions and the country that we have both left.
I met Bice Beatrice Slama in 2016; she was 93 years old. She came to see my film, Around Maïr, which talks about women's literature. She spoke first: "I will let my comrades talk about feminism; “I would like to talk about the form of the film and this long dark shot that recalls the cinema of Duras.” Immediately, I was thrilled and seduced. Two days later, I was dining at her house in Vincennes. I left unsettled, impressed by her precise presence, by her concise speech, erudite, without nostalgia or bitterness. She put her story in the grand History and repeated a phrase by Sartre: "Half victims, half accomplices, like everyone else.” She told me about her passion for books, the Tunisian Communist Party and the Jewish and Arab youth who discovered each other in fraternity and love, her fight for the independence of Tunisia, the houses that were seized from her because she was Jewish, of her departure for France, of May 1968 when she was reborn as an activist, of the adventure at the University of Vincennes, of Colette, whom she loved so much, of feminist texts, of her friends: Madeleine Rebérioux, Hélène Cixous, ...
Three days later, I returned with a small camera to prepare for the recording of this concentrated history. Bice Beatrice Slama is resolutely political and profoundly literary. A discreet life that has actively traversed the 20th century. I wanted to traverse it again with her. I wanted to give her the entire space, the whole duration of the film. I warned her that she would be the only speaker in the feature-length film and I will be alone behind the camera. She immediately went to work; she read, reread her research, books, Duras, de Beauvoir, Colette ... she had an obsession with conversation, anecdotes and rewrote her mediations, her responses. She told me she felt like she was taking her exams! Her story navigates the course of history. Her discourse is an expanding source that opens the film to other subjects, other images. The history of feminism is told with the words of Christine de Pizan and Hubertine Auclert and through the works of women in cinema, photography, and painting across the centuries. Beatrice will remain alive until the end of the film. While editing the film in Montreal, she warned me from time to time that she could no longer wait. I went to show her the film in September 2018, I lay down beside her on her medical bed. She watched nonstop for 97 minutes. She looked at me and took my hand. Bice Beatrice Slama died a few days later. She told me that our lives, our bodies, end, and there is nothing after, there is neither the beyond, nor heaven. She spoke of death with clarity, without fear. During the shooting about the departure of Tunisia, she said to me: "At the moment of departure, the first thing that I said to myself: But I will not be buried in the Borgel!"
The tears welled up inside me, I lowered my head, we did not want tears in the film, she returned to her dialogue with her usual solemnity. This phrase and similar ones are not in the film; they are invisible, in an underground presence that runs throughout the entire film. Beatrice inspired me in this way: not to say too much, not to show too much, to put our story in the grand History. Keep our pain in the background to make way for the future. And facing the breakdown of ideas that carried her, she continued saying: "I dare to hope for a burst of humanism."
(Translation Beti Ellerson)
Beatrice : un siècle | (a century) de/by Hejef Charf (Tunisia | Tunisie)