Our body is a weapon – Prisons, Guerilla

Entitled “Notre corps est une arme”, Clarisse Hahn’s new project (VDR 2007) consists of a number of documentaries: centred on Mexico, Los Desnudos shows the protest marches of farmers expropriated by the government, while Boyzone is a series of portraits of juvenile delinquents published in the Mexican press. VdR has decided to programme a dual feature focusing on the Kurds: Prisons revisits the persecution of Kurdish political prisoners in Turkish gaols (2000), through the words of two female survivors, deeply and physically affected by this experience. Guérilla, meanwhile, consists of images shot by Kurdish PKK rebels in the borderlands between Turkey and Iraq. Celebrating and dancing, their young bodies make light of death, reminiscent of the Palestinian fedayindescribed by Genet in their bases in Jordan. The second part shows Kurdish refugees living on the streets in Paris meeting at PKK headquarters and reproducing the same gestures as their compatriots-in-arms in a public park.  In the words of a hunger striker, they are like “loaded guns, bullets ready to be fired”. If only for the duration of a dance.

Emmanuel Chicon

Translation BMP Translations