We are very excited about the first Close Viewing this year! We will watch the film Blind Spot (1980, german with english subtitles, 1hr 51mins). Beforehand the artist Riikka Tauriainen will introduce us her research about feminotopias in the history of colonialism, part of it is about Flora Tristan, who is also a main figure in the film. Tauriainen's research on feminotopias is part of a collaborative art project with the name [f: la répète], that is taking place at the moment in Zürich at Le Foyer and takes a critical look at the question how privileged women traveled in colonial times, as well as examines the relations of colonialism and capitalism in the patriarchal society and the accesses of postcolonial critique of historical and current power relations.
The film is about an historian who is researching the life of Flora Tristan. In her search for an active way to remember and understand the past, the historian, Elisabeth, decides to abandon traditional desk-bound study, leaves behind her family and visits Lyon, where Tristan herself had worked.
Flora Tristan became active in the feminist movement in the early 1830s, arguing for divorce and against gender constraints. She saw women as prostituted to marriage and believed that it was only through divorce that the morality of France could rise. After living in Peru for a year in 1833-34, radicalized and empowered by her Peruvian experiences, Tristan went on to become one of France’s most prominent pre-Marxian socialists, founder of the Workers’ Union.
Love! Riikka, Kerstin, Gökçe, Martina, Les Complices*
http://cinenova.org
