Olivier Morel
2018 - 118 min - Video 4K - Couleur - France
Born in Algeria a few months before the start of the Second World War to a Sephardic father and a German Ashkenazi mother, Hélène Cixous moved to France in 1955 during the Algerian War.
At the age of 18, she had already witnessed the assassination of dozens of members of her family in concentration camps as well as the start of the violent war of decolonization in Algeria that would ultimately force her family to leave North Africa. She has experienced anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim sentiments at a very young age. She quickly became Professor of English literature at the University of Bordeaux, later in Nanterre in 1967 and then La Sorbonne.
She created the experimental University of Paris-8 in 1968, where she brought together some of the most important thinkers of our age including Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze.
Internationally recognized for her founding texts on gender and literature, she launched the first doctoral program in Women’s Studies in France in 1974. In addition, she has taught in many respected academic institutions in the United States, including Cornell and Northwestern. She has been distinguished with honorary degrees by many universities around the world, and won many literary prizes including the esteemed Prix Médicis. She has been the “house playwright” at Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil since the late seventies.
Author-Director : Olivier Morel
Photography : Cédric Dupire, Sarah Blum, Emmanuelle Collinot, Jean-Gabriel Leynaud, Olivier Morel, Gertrude Baillot
Sound : Agnès Szabó, Christian Lutz, Mikael Kandelman, Graciela Barrault, Benjamin Bober, Érik Ménard, Didier Pazery, Guillaume Valeix
Editing : Matthieu Augustin
Original Music : Jean-Jaques Lemètre
Delegate Producer : Zadig Productions
Contribution : CNC. Aide au développement, Procirep, Angoa-Agicoa
Distinctions
2019 - Ierapetra documentary festival, Ierapetra (Grèce) : Sélection2019 - Realtime Interantional Film Festival, Lagos (Nigeria) : Sélection
2018 - Festival des Films du Monde, Montréal (Canada) : Sélection