Djamilia

“All Kyrgyz women support her!” Jamila, the heroine of Chingiz Aitmatov’s novel published in 1958, is kidnapped and married off according to a still practiced Kyrgyz custom, but she escapes with her lover. When on location scouting, Aminatou Echard realised that the mention of this protagonist literally opened doors. This surprising access to people’s intimate worlds called for a film in its own right. The testimonies that came out of these encounters paint the portrait of a patriarchal society that has resurfaced since the end of the Soviet era. The sensuality of Super 8 film, with its grain accentuated at times by refilming, goes against the usual vintage aesthetics. The absence of synched sound heightens the lucidity of what the women across all generations have to say. Excerpts from the novel, translated into French by Louis Aragon, are superimposed onto the landscape. Soon, the writing ceases to appear as emanating from someone else (a male author, a canonical text), and espouses a feminine activity pursued despite the heavy constraints of daily life, whether this means writing at night time, transmitting to girls in high school the capacity to express their desires and refusal, composing songs, writing one’s autobiography unbeknown to one’s husband, or even inventing feminist graffiti, like the teenager who advocates for gender equality. A fitting subversion, on the vertical stone of walls, of the proverb that condemned women to inertia… (Charlotte Garson)