Translated by Maia Sefton

The witch hunts during the Renaissance led to around 100 000 executions in Europe, the victim being mostly old, poor rural women. Between 1560 and 1660, it’s a brutal repression especially along the Rhin, but women are guilty by nature for most catholics. The church strongly encourages the denunciation of Jewish women, who are supposedly the origin of the mythical evil witches and the sabbath, which is a demonic ceremony that involves orgies and the cooking of children. Witches are seen as even more menacing when they are jewish, her persecution relies mostly on an imaginary conspiracy that would threaten christianity. If a women was suspected of being a witch whether it be because she was outspoken or lived alone the common procedure waas to torture her until they discovered the mark of the devil or any old scar really that would cement the idea that she has indeed made a deal with the devil. Sometimes she was tied up and thrown in a lake: if she floated then the assumptions were correct and she was then burned at the stake, but if she sank she was just a regular woman who drowned. The church led the charge since the devil himself is said to be the one who causes all the woes of the world such as earthquakes and epidemics – these epidemics were on the rise because of the growing number of rats in the streets caused by the lack of cats since they were killed due to them being associated with witchcraft.

Moreover the printing press started diffusing the treaty of Malleus Maleficarum ( or “witches hammer”) at the end of the XVth century which shared the idea that women were inferior and that witches were a huge threat. A witch, a free and independent woman is scary for a lot of men. Because what does a woman have when she is free of a husband and has no children? She has power. A witch chooses her own lifestyle. She is no longer beholden to society’s values that tell a woman to get married, have kids, to have no intense sexuelle experiences and to just be quiet and look pretty, to be seen but not heard. A witch lives alone and flourishes by helping her community thanks to her knowledge and therapeutic practices. The single woman embodies independence which is not taught to young girls. For them growing as a person is intertwined with building a family and marriage whereas for men there is no miraculous idea of marriage but more the idea that they need to conquer the world. If older ladies are more oppressed it’s because their experience allows them to know better and be more self assured which is accentuated by the lack of a husband. They are less submissive then the younger women which is frowned upon in the patriarchy. Moreover a woman’s aging body is a symbol of repulsion, grey hair is a sign of negligence (or rebellion). When a woman grows old, her body shouldn’t show the slightest sign of aging since a woman’s worth depends solely on what her body looks like. Having a rational mind is labelled as maculine and the natural body is labelled as feminin. All women have to rely on is their bodies that is why aging is seen as such a big problem : in Baudelaire’s “Une charogne” he describes a carcass in anticipation of what the future holds for his lover without even thinking that he too shall age. The time when people believed that we had to kill women to allow men to flourish is over- if we don’t take into account the 146 femicides in France in 2019 (one every two and a half days, a 21% raise over the course of a year). Witches have also made a huge comeback in literature these past few years ; such as “ Les Sorcière” by Céline du Chéné which was inspired by a France Culture documentary series (2018) and “ Sorcières La puissance invaincu des femmes” (2018) by Mona Chollet.

Nevertheless by the end of the 1960’s witches were already being appropriated by a few feminist movements as a sign of rebellion. The group WITCH ((Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), founded on Halloween of 1968 in New York would cast hexes in front of Wall Street as an anti-capitalist movement. American witches continue to meet up at the foot of Trump Tower to curse the president. And in France The Witch bloc Aix- Marseille protested in 2019 against “ la marche pour la vie” which was against abortions with slogans such as brush conservatisme under the rug or embryos for our potions. Witche aren’t just used as a symbol for feminism, their fights span across numerous causes as the Witch bloc Aix-Marseille proclaimed: “ feminists, anarchist are against all systematic oppression. We are anti racism, antifaschist, anticapitalist pro sexworkers, fighting for womens rights,cis and trans, for LGBTQ+ rights, people of colors rights and our group is anonymous and single-sex.”

However this contemporary movement has a certain aspect of white feminism that is appropriating cultures and practices that foreign to them and appropriating a memory that is not their own.

By Heolruz and translated by Maia Sefton

Generations correspond to the idea that a certain decade is represented by a group of people. We are talking about “generations” to represent our elders or musically speaking, the different decades represent different artists or music genres. “Generations” are even mentioned in the famous game Pokemon, all of these references are part of commun knowledge to us. It is also quite similar in the cinematic world. There are of course tens of generations of directors, and many different generations of actors and actresses, etc.. I did not want to do an extremely ambitious expose recounting all emblematic people from each generation so I turned towards a wider definition of the word generations. The generation often being that of our elders. I wanted to take a look at how these people are portrayed by the camera who played and still play big roles in society.

I wanted to present a film that I hold in my heart, it’s a documentary called Plogoff, rocks against shotguns, which was released in 1980 and it focuses on a fight that led a small breton village to fight against the installation of a nuclear power plant. In this film we are interested in the problems that could transcend generations for young people to not so young. In this documentary we are lucky to have many witnesses and statements. It is not a cinematic subgenre, La déchirure ( 1984) is here to remind us how thin the border between film and documentary is. Plogoff benefited from a new outburst of support due to it’s restoration by the region of Bretagne, Bretagne’s Cinematheque, and the national cinema center. This documentary was then redistributed in cinemas in 2019 and 2020.

The year is 1980, Plogoff is a play about the mobilisation against the construction of a nuclear power plant and Felix and Nicole Le Garrec decide to join the movement. To bring light to the situation they decide to make a film, a film about the people of plogoff, a film where the (subventions) are assured by the Le Garrec family. For two months they filmed the confrontations between the police and the protestor , the speeches and interviewed many of the locals. Plogoff brings us the feelings and words of the generations in this village. While watching this film we understand the interest of
these kind of pieces, we rediscover different ways of living, differents ways of thinking and we understand the different endgames and evolutions. Filming the actor and actresses, is telling a story but filming men and women is showing their story. The generation found its place within this documentary, and in the end it was one of the only films to show in cinemas the generations opinions on the nuclear.

In a completely different register I recommend a sad but very interesting short film by Anthony Chen : Ah Ma (2007). The generational aspect is definitely found since the film is centered around one of the character’s deaths. Anthony Chen’s talents lead us through fifteen minutes of painful passage between generations. This Singaporian director was awarded at Cannes for this short film.