We met 15 Egyptian women and together we built an interactive ABC centered on the question of Womanhood. This project is a collaborative web-documentary bringing together, in one platform, a plurality of women's voices.
Our criteria was finding participants from different professional backgrounds who've had to tackle the notion of Gender through their social activities - professional life, volunteering, creation/production of any kind: artistic, academic, literary and so on.
We chose to film their interviews in English, not as an imperialist narrative but as one of a widely globalized generation, exchanging through a common international language.
The youngest is 20 years old, the oldest is 83 years old: each encounter led to the other since every woman personally knows at least one other participant. Some are internationally famous, others are more locally renowned or active: these voices will be given the same visibility on our website.
In 2015, Florie, our film director, met them in their homes, at their friends', or at their work place, between Dokki, Shubra, Downtown, Mohandessin, Zamalek, and even Paris. No film crew, no set, no special lights, just an encounter with the camera as only the witness.
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No direct questions were asked to them. On the contrary, they were presented with a list of words to choose from or to complete. They then decided the words they wanted to talk about, and were free to evoke whatever they associated to them. “Expected" words, that some media over-emphasize, were avoided... Instead, a list of broader, more metaphorical terms was presented to them.
7 hours of testimonies divided into 80 videos. Each video will last between 2 and 18 minutes. While editing, we didn't cut out any part of those streams of thought because the personal rhythm and tone are part of the individual narrative. Just like in a conversation, start with a subject, a theme, a word, and take the time to see where the person you're listening to takes it.
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1) You will first click on the word you want to hear about. Choose a word, enter a kaleidoscope of worldviews: navigate through language.
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2) Then you will choose amongst all the sequences where this word is mentioned. Pick your video according to the other words each woman linked to the one you chose: explore their lexical field.
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Also, on this same website, in order to give context and historical depth to these testimonies, you will also find the following elements:
- a bibliography section: a literary and academic selection of books on the theme of Gender in Egypt.
- a chronological timeline section: an interactive timeline that evokes the history of women's movements in Egypt.
- a biography section: a small biography where each woman explains how Gender interacted with her social activities.
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In order to finish our project and create such a technical and interactive website, we need to obtain at least this minimal amount of funding. Your help, the help of your friends, the help of your friends' friends, the help of your parents' friends, all help, is going to be crucial to making this happen.
If we ever reach our wildest dreams and obtain more donations than this minimal finance plan, our first initiative would be to edit a more classical version of our documentary. This 52 minute documentary would help us have more possibilities to apply for film festivals that see eye-to-eye with our project.
Also we want to try to turn this project into an interactive exhibition curated around the notion of Perspectives.
Our aim is to multiply the mediums and the public spaces where those worldviews are screened.
Thanks in advance for your support, your interest and your contributions. Let's split the cab and share the ride !
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We are all coming from different professional backgrounds, we are all living in many different cities (and sometimes a little Lost in Translation...), yet we shared skills and embarked on this connected journey.
Florie Bavard (25 years old, Paris / Cairo), director and co-producer. During her master's degree at the Advanced School for Social Studies, she wrote an anthropological dissertation on feminine autobiographical writings, memoirs and blogs, in Egypt. Since then, she has turned towards Visual Anthropology as a new way to question the subject of Gender: this is her first venture into the interactive documentary medium.
Benjamin Daugeron (27 years old, Paris), co-producer. He is the founder of Womanhood Productions, the non-profit association that shelters our documentary (France, Association Loi 1901). He built this structure, along with the film director, to promote this project and have a clear legal framework. It's his first audio-visual production adventure.
Anaïs Bourdet (31 years old, Buenos Aires / Marseille), artistic director. Founder of the Tumblr account calling out street harassment Paye Ta Shnek, she has more than 175 000 followers on her Facebook page.
Camille Léonard (29 years old, Lisbon), web-designer and UX designer. He is the master mind behind our website's ergonomics, and navigation system. Your experience on our website is his creation.
Léonie Pernet (27 years old, Paris), music composer. Musician, her first EP, Two of Us, was released on the label Kill the DJ in April 2015. Her album will come out at the end of 2016.
Aloyse Leledy (34 years old, Paris), film editor. She graduated from the Beaux Arts in Paris, in film making. She is involved in projects that come up with new forms of documentary writing.
Marine Benayoun (29 years old, Paris), PR. Former journalist at the Grand Journal (Canal +) she is in charge of the promotion of our interactive documentary.
And last but not least: Patrice Pellier (Paris, developer of our website), Naïma Pierre (Paris, translator), Ahmed Abuzaid (Cairo, translator and copy editor), Mohammed Abdelsalam Radwan (Cairo, translator), Hiba Abdel-Majid (Paris, translator), Asmaa Blal (Paris, translator), Jonathan Hemmen & Antoine Hohagen (Paris, sound mixers, Square Studio), Elvire Bourgeois (Paris, color grading), Tiénot Dagron (Paris, crowdfunding consultant, Les Argos).
