1° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE CINEMA GIOVANI
Opere Prime 1982

Les filles héréditaires

by Danièle Dubroux, Marie-Christine Questerbert, Viviane Berthommier
Country: France
Year: 1982
Duration: 99


Dérapage. Two journalists, Aurore and Emile, go to Berlin during the Film Festival to cover a story on young German directors and between Berlin and Paris the two friends live the experience of an unexpected situation: new love relationships crossing their paths when they’re almost thirty. On a narrative level, Dérapage is structured in a way that keeps giving a comparison of the two worlds in which Aurore gets involved: on the one hand there’s Paris, her everyday life, the relationship with her daughter and her mother, her daily fights; on the other hand Berlin, a city far away from hers, an interesting work opportunity, but also place of desire. In Berlin we see the Filmfest, where the two journalists get even to interview Rainer Werner Fassbinder, but we can also feel the obsessive presence of the Wall.
Retour d’Allemagne. It is a train journey from Berlin to Paris. Susanne is totally involved in the conversations of her fellow travelers, she carefully looks at their faces, she admires the landscape, she is involved in “railway compartment” situations… She went to Berlin to check some places for a film and during her journey back her fantasy puts the scenes of the films on top of the reality of the train. And this reality will eventually acquire the spirit and the mood of her thoughts.
Soeur Anne ne vois-tu rien venir. Anne decides to go to Berlin to “set” better the protagonist of the screenplay she is writing: a German friend that used to live with her while her parents were divorcing. Manou, actress wannabe that keeps looking for a “part”, is a stripper for a living and when Anne tells her her intentions she goes with her to try her luck in Germany, because she is sure that in the new German cinema, her 30s kind of style should allow her to succeed. But Berlin is a different and double city, as well as they and who they meet are: Caspar, with his blanded and uncertain identity and Gregor, the filmmaker who loves “the freaks and the stars” and who can’t see in Manou what he is looking for. During a journey that began as a search of another image of themselves, the two friends will end up finding themselves again, in a conflicting kind of relationship as a trick with mirrors where one complains to the other because she can’t see her as she sees herself.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Biography

film director

Marie-Christine Questerbert

Marie-Christine Questerbert was born in Paris in November 1946; she graduates at the Sorbonne, discussing her thesis with Roland Barthes. In 1969 she directs Buy Me, Sell Me, a short movie produced by Groupement de Recherches et d’Essais Cinématographiques, later followed in 1972 by L’interminable chevauchée solitaire, “feminist western”, and in 1974 Octopus de natura. In 1976 she starts working as a cinema critic, covering reports from different film festival for the “Cahiers du Cinéma”, “Maintenant” and “ Sauf Mardi”.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Viviane Berthommier

FILMOGRAFIA

Viviane Berthommier was born in Bellac in June 1946; she studies to be a director at INSAS in Bruxelles and makes two short films (Histoire de l’ours, 1968 and Ces Femmes, 1970) and a medium-length movie: Alice, Babar et les quarentes nenuphars. During the following years works for Editions Maspero on “De l’autre côté de la maternitée” and works on a research on women for the University of Grenoble. In 1976 she starts again the production of short films, in partnership with the Atelier de Cinéma di Caen and, from 1977, she works on a series of radio programmes: “Au bord de la mere”, “Hamman, jour des femmes” with Juliet Berto and Isabelle Adjani, “Berlin, quelque bandes sonores avec ells”, meetings with directors from Berlin. In 1980 she shoots Javotte, a short produced by Antenne Deux.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Danièle Dubroux

Danièle Dubroux was an editor of «Cahiers du Cinéma» from 1976 to 1985. She made some short films. In 1984 she made his first feature film, Les Amants terribles, winner of numerous awards. She often appears as an actress in her films.

FILMOGRAFIA

L'Olivier (co-regia, doc., 1975), Les Deux élèves préférés du professeur Francine Brouda (cm, 1978), Le Colosse et la fourmi (cm, 1981), Sœur Anne ne vois-tu rien venir (cm, 1982), Les Amants terribles (1984), La Petite allumeuse (1988), Border Line (1991), Le Journal du séducteur (1995), L'Examen de minuit (1998).

Declaration

film director

A collective film

The film develops within a journey between two capital cities, Paris and Berlin, and from the beginning it assumes the features of a mysterious one: a rise along the course of History, of childhood and of the subconscious that touches sensitivities such as guilt, freedom and its limits, rebellion, love, hate, silence, the unsaid, national identity and the search of identity. Les filles héréditaires is the result of a collective project that combines to the three French directors also Jutta Brückner, Helma Sanders and Ula Stöckl. And among these six directors, both French and German, there is a really tight connection, tense, made of rooted heritages (they all are “les filles héréditaires” of the war between their countries), of recent movements, and feminism is for sure one of the most important moments. Especially for the French directors, going to Berlin meant reaching the border, touching the limit, the line of a world that calls itself “free”. Actually Berlin is for them an imaginary place, a closed and empty space in which they show their shadows and their fears. The film is created in a movement of flows and ebbs from a city to another one, a Paris-Berlin axis traced on a railway map. Anyway it isn’t a first class drowsy and comfortable journey, but a troubling itinerary and after that everyone feels different.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Cast

& Credits

1° episodio: Dérapage.
Director: Marie-Christine Questerbert.
Director of photography: Jean Francis Gondre (16mm, colore).
Assistente alla fotografia: Philippe Ros.
Sound: Philippe Quinsac.
Director assistant: Catherine Laurent.
Editor: Jeanne Gargonne.
Cast and characters: Catherine Breillat (Aurore); Marie Rivière (Emilie); Jean Noël Picq (Boster); Emanuelle Riva (la madre); Zeline Chalern (la figlia) e con la partecipazione di Rainer Werner Fassbinder; durata: 33 minuti.

2° episodio: Retour d'Allemagne.
Director: Viviane Berthommier.
Director of photography: Bruno Nuytten.
Assistente alla fotografia: Pascal Marty (16mm, colore).
Sound: Patrick Frederich.
Director assistant: Valdrie Paulin.
Editor: Dominique Auvray.
ICast: Camille de Casabianca, Bernard Frank, Marcel Dalio; durata: 31 minuti.

3° episodio: Soeur Anne ne voistu rien venir.
Director: Danièle Dubroux.
Director of photography: VeyrinForres (16mm, colore).
Editor: Martine Giordano.
Mixage: Alain Garnier.
Director assistant: Stavros Kaplanidis.
Cast: Manuela Gourary, DaniMe Dubroux, Cyril Spiga, Rudolph Tome; durata: 35 minuti;
Production company: 6 Girls Productions, ZDF.
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