The 3 Continents: a feminist festival ?

 
            “Woman is the future of man”: such are the words used in the 1960s by the very well-known French poet Louis Aragon to depict the worldwide revolution which was on the march at the time – a revolution which advocated “the birth of the New Woman”, that is to say a woman getting rid of male supremacy – I mean of course the “Women’s Liberation Movement”. But is it the same wind of rebellion that currently shakes the Festival?

            I truly know that, as a very famous saying goes, “you do not judge a book by its cover” (or a Festival by its poster!) but it seems that for the last two years, women are, within the Festival of 3 Continents, literally at the top of the bill. So here is in fact my question today: “is woman the future of the Festival?”

            All things considered and just going by the films and short-films I had the pleasure to watch up to now, the answer is definitely “YES”: women do get a good deal in this 31^st edition. This fact is even more striking when applied to African and more especially Ethiopian cinema – a cinema which, in spite of a blatant lack of well-trained professionals, nevertheless manages to play its game perfectly well.

            How indeed could one not be touched by the story of Tsega, this eighteen year old Ethiopian girl whose future solely depends on her exam results or yet by the story of this teenage boy who, in the short-film Fighting With Father, exclaims “I lost a mother to AIDS but my father just lost a wife”?

            As luck would have it, yesterday was “International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women”: there was no better way to pay tribute both to woman and motherhood.

            But in the Festival of 3 Continents, femininity is not only celebrated on screen: it is also a way of life or rather a way of work… There may be no manicure, nor hairdresser at Cosmopolis, the General Headquarter, but there is a fabulous masseuse to prevent the female staff from being overcome by stress… The Festival of 3 Continents - because you're worth it!