Only relatively recently have exhibitions and critical texts mentioned explicitly Cahun’s lesbianism. It also took some time for light to be shone on her emotional, and above all creative, relationship with Suzanne Malherbe / Marcel Moore. Any look at Cahun and Moore’s work has to take account of the couple’s ties to a community of women, many of them lesbians, who found themselves in the same place (Paris) at the same time (the interwar period): Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, Janet Flanes, Marie Laurencin, Tamara de Lempicka, Colette, Romaine Brooks, Djuna Barnes and Natalie Barney, amongst others.

PARIS WAS A WOMAN

François Leperlier, Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss in conversation

Film: Paris Was a Woman(1996, 75 min, original language with subtitles)

Tuesday 10 January 2012

7 pm: Talk

8 pm: Screening

Paris Was a Woman

Paris Was a Woman is a film that depicts the creative community of female writers, artists, photographers and publishers on the Left Bank in Paris in the early decades of the twentieth century, when Paris was the greatest cultural capital in the world. Following extensive research and recently discovered films, this work has an intimate narrative style that combines interviews and stories. Paris Was a Woman recreates the atmosphere of this female artistic community made up of writers Colette, Djuna Barnes and Gertrude Stein, poets Hilda Doolittle and Natalie Clifford Barney, painters Romaine Brooks and Marie Laurencin, publishers Bryher, Alice B. Toklas, Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, photographers Berenice Abbott and Gisèle Freund, booksellers Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier and journalist Janet Flanner.

François Leperlier

Writer, philosopher, essayist and French art historian. He has carried out extensive research on Claude Cahun since 1984 and written her biography; he was one of the first researchers to explore her work in depth. He teaches at the IUFM-University in Rouen. He has worked on several publications and his books include L’exotisme intérieur (2006) and Claude Cahun: l’écart et la métamorphose (1992). In addition, he edited Claude Cahun, Écrits (2002) and Claude Cahun. Photographe (1995) and co-edited Mise en scene: Photographs by Tacita Dean, Claude Cahun and Virginia Nimarkoh. He has also re-edited Cahun’s complete literary output, including Aveux non avenus and Heroïnes. In 1995 he organised a retrospective on the artist at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Most of his books centre on his interest in photography and poetry and include Œuvres complètes de Magloire-Saint-Aude (1998), Diana Michener. Epiphanie du corps (2001) and Pierre Caminade. Œuvre poétique (2004).

Greta Schiller

Independent producer and film director. Her first documentary, Before Stonewall (1984), described life for the LGBT community in the United States between the 1920s and 1970s. In 1984 she helped set up Jezebel Productions to produce documentaries. Together with Andrea Weiss, she produced and directed a trilogy of films on women and jazz: International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin’ Women, and Maxine Sullivan: Love to be in Love. Schiller wrote and directed the fiction short film Woman of the Wolf, which was screened in the United States and the United Kingdom. Her most highly acclaimed documentary, Paris Was a Woman (1996), has been screened in over sixteen countries and won awards at several international festivals. In 2000 she produced Escape to life: the Erika and Klaus Mann story. She also produced The Man who Drove with Mandela (1999), which won the Teddy Award for Best Documentary at the Berlinale.

Andrea Weiss

Is a documentary filmmaker and nonfiction author whose books include Paris Was A Woman (1995), Vampires And Violets: Lesbians in Film (1993), and, most recently, In the Shadow of The Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story (2008). They have been translated into several languages. Writer and co-producer of Paris Was a Woman, Andrea is also the co-writer and director of Escape To Life, a feature documentary about the lives of Erika and Klaus Mann which premiered in the 2001 Rotterdam and Berlin Film Festivals. Her previous film credits include Recall Florida, I Live At Ground Zero, Seed of Sarah, A Bit of Scarlet, Before Stonewall, International Sweethearts of Rhythm, and Tiny & Ruby: Hell Divin’ Women. Also, she holds a Ph.D. in History and is professor of Film and Video at the City College of New York.