Director and actress Delphine Seyrig interviews over twenty actresses from different countries.
Seyrig, who remains unseen behind her handheld Portapak camera, interviews actresses aged from 20 (Maria Schneider) to 70 (Maidie Norman). What would they do if they were men? How often do they get to play friends? Who are their characters and their partners on set? Seyrig’s questions in many ways anticipate the Bechdel test—originally a joke, the test has become a measure of gender bias: it requires that a work of fiction has at least two female characters who speak about something other than men. Seryrig’s protagonists respond with irony, rage, and firm belief in the future, highlighting issues in the film industry that have remained unresolved for decades.
Seyrig made Be Pretty and Shut Up! as part of the group Les Insoumuses, which covered the struggle for women’s rights in the mid-1970s. She recorded the interviews in 1975 and 1976, but completed the film only in 1981. When Godard mentions Be Pretty and Shut Up! in his Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television, he expresses his dissatisfaction with the fact that it gives voice to actresses, as, according to him, they represent that strange workforce which is hardly distinguishable from an inanimate medium in the hands of the creator. When speaking about female labor in the film industry, he insists, we should instead interview the extras and the accountants. He dismisses Seyrig’s film as a «not a very serious» work, as it does not even include excerpts from the films the interviewees played in and does not show their characters. In his desire to correct Seyrig’s film, he does not notice that her work contains a response to his argument: she does not look for quotes or fictional images, as she does not direct: she listens. Allowing the actresses to speak of their characters, she breaks the silence of the «medium in the hands of the creator» and gives actresses agency.
With a total absence of set design, raw footage, and protagonists wearing no make-up filmed at home or in noisy cafés, Be Pretty and Shut Up! does indeed look very different from a feature film, as it is first and foremost a documentary. The distance between interviewer and interviewees is minimal, which ensures maximum authenticity, while at the same time introducing subjectivity. And this is exactly what the film is about: not history or images but people—and specifically, women.
The film will be screened in French with Russian subtitles.
A shortened version of the film will be shown at the screening, as scenes that do not comply with Russian law have been removed.
The screening will be followed by a one-hour discussion with the curator of the program A Woman and a Camera Alisa Nasrtdinova, film critic Grisha Yeskov, and a Garage mediator, inviting viewers to exchange opinions on the film. The discussion, moderated by the mediator, will be organized as a dialogue, where the opinions and impressions of each viewer will be given equal attention. Participation is free.
Be Pretty and Shut Up!
Director: Delphine Seyrig
France, 1981. 115 min
18+