Corps troubles, peaux d’argent #4 | Entrée, plat, dessert

About the series

“Corps troubles, peaux d’argent” is a new queer-feminist cinema series, an invitation to explore together how marginalized artists can take up the tools of analog filmmaking to express the materiality of their existence and propose different ways of doing things.

Sometimes I wonder whether white, able-bodied, cisgender heterosexual men know they have bodies. Their bodies are never questioned; they are presented as a neutral, universal point of reference. By contrast, women, queer people, racialized people, and disabled people are constantly reduced to their bodies, forced to become hyper-aware of their appearance and every smallest gesture. Our bodies are seen as blemishes, as disgusting, or as fascinating. They are target bodies, over which power has claimed the right to look and to control. Bodies that are sometimes confined to darkness and silence, and sometimes exposed to the predatory, extractive light of dominant cultural and media forms. So how can DIY, amateur, or experimental cinema show them as anything other than mere objects of the gaze? What aesthetics and representations can it offer these bodies, which feel and live beyond norms and assigned identities?

If prohibitions and violence are inscribed in the flesh, the body emerges as a site of transgression and resistance. For marginalized filmmakers, it is often the only resource available for creating. Their works thus bear witness to the urgency of speaking for oneself, from the margins and from the gut, while our stories are constantly co-opted and exploited by the capitalist machine. These are situated, embodied films, made with partial or complete independence from the film industry. Pieced together with whatever is at hand, often developed by hand in a self-managed lab or a bathroom turned into a darkroom, they retain the traces left by the hands that shaped them.

At a time when the obsolescence of celluloid is no longer up for debate, when generative artificial intelligences create disembodied images, and when the rise of fascist politics reasserts control over bodies, the short films brought together in this program invite us to reconsider the body-film relationship through an approach that is both sensory and political.

Malou Six

The screening

If biting into the forbidden fruit is the origin of sin, then this screening invites us to organize great feasts, succumb to the intoxicating scent of sake, delight in watching dough being kneaded, savor the juicy flesh of a pomegranate, remember impromptu picnics with friends, and spew out the excess we take in… Objects of desire, disgust, or sharing, food appears here in all its forms, calling on sensuality, excess, or humor in turn to queer our relationship to what we eat and how we eat it. What if we replaced family meals with culinary orgies? Perhaps then we could trace the origins of the expression “c’est un pain.” In the meantime, the bakery is open!

Solitary Acts #5

by Nazli Dinçel | 2015 | United States | 5 min

The filmmaker practices kissing in front of a mirror. Childhood memories resurface, marked by overconsumption and oral fixations, both sexual (kissing) and bodily (eating).

Milk and Cream

by Deidre Logue | 2000 | Canada | 1 min

Not recommended for people who are lactose intolerant, this film raises questions about desire through excess and abjection.

Looking for Jiro

by TT Takemoto | 2011 | United States | 6 min

Jiro Onuma immigrated from Japan to the United States in the 1920s, at the age of 19, and was imprisoned in a camp in Utah during World War II. He worked in the prison mess hall and liked muscular men. This project tries to imagine how he survived the isolation, boredom, humiliation, and heteronormativity of imprisonment as a gay, single San Francisco dandy.

Erotics of the Kitchen

by Juliana Julieta | 2023 | Portugal | 2 min

Made by reusing images, this film interweaves cooking and pornography and explores the malleability of cutting (film and vegetables).

Les corps dansants

by La Fille Renne, Laure Giappiconi, Elisa Monteil | 2019 | France | 6 min

A joyful ode to sisterhood, an invitation to have breakfast with friends.

Let’s go to the Trans Ladies Picnic

by Frances Arpaia | 2015 | United States | 1 min

Brooklyn, New York. What better way to bring the community together than a picnic?

On the Line

by TT Takemoto | 2018 | United States | 6 min

Inspired by prewar cannery workers in San Diego, this film offers a meditation on Japanese American women who cleaned tuna, worked on the assembly line, and developed lesbian intimacies amid sake and fish guts while the men went out to sea.

Two/Doh

by Michelle Mohabeer | 1996 | Canada | 4 min

A poetic exploration of public and private spaces of desire, and its intersection with the cultural and erotic bonds between two women of different backgrounds: Persian-Armenian and Sri Lankan.

Practical information

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Tickets go on sale 30 minutes before each screening.

We operate on a pay-what-you-can basis (everyone pays what they want/can/feel is fair). We believe pay-what-you-can pricing gives everyone the opportunity to enjoy the experiences that interest them and to value the work done as they see fit.

Membership in the association is required to attend screenings. It costs from 8€ and is valid for one calendar year. You can sign up online. For those who wish and are able, membership also allows you to support us by adding an amount of your choice.