‘Yours in Sisterhood’: Rethinking the Feminist Archive at the 2018 Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal

Abstract

Like the statue of Apollo, emerging from the Mediterranean off the shores of Gaza after centuries (maybe) underwater (L’Apollon de Gaza, Nicolas Wadimoff, 2018, 78 mins), many films from the 2018 Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal (RIDM) festival focused on the labour of unearthing old materials archived away. In different ways, the films document this labour, as well as the materials’ political potential to move us despite their temporal distance. Indeed, by inviting experimental filmmaker and archivist Rick Prelinger to a series of screening sessions and master classes on the theme of “Archives, Popular Documentary, NYC,” RIDM encouraged a reflection and discussion on the intersection of documentaries, archives, and urban landscapes. Some films follow the vein of Prelinger’s Panorama Ephemera (2004, 90 mins) by reflecting on the public history of specific countries through the lens of found footage. For example, Kristina Konrad’s Unas Preguntas (237 mins) and Ruth Beckermann’s The Waldheim Waltz (93 mins) both use public archives and personal footage from the 1980s to reflect on the history of Uruguay and Austria, respectively. These films bring forward a reflection on democracy and social movements with hindsight. In The Image You Missed (93 mins), Donal Foreman takes a more personal approach to the matter by entangling footage shot by his late father, documentarist Arthur MacCaig, with his own, in order to revisit a part of Irish history in parallel with his complicated relationship with his father. On the other hand, in two powerful experimental documentaries—Salomé Lamas’ Extinction (85 mins) and Talena Sanders’ Between My Flesh And The World’s Fingers (31 mins; unfortunately paired with the unabashedly masculine 4 Years In 10 Minutes by Mladen Kovacevic)—it is the landscape that comes to bear the trace of history, becoming a public and private archive. Whether it is in the form of decaying soviet architecture, or in the paths and mountains of Montana, both films create an intimate, essayistic vision of history. Sanders’ film turns to the life and work of American poet Mary MacLane by interlacing archival footage and re-enactments, superimposed with text from her diary. What is striking from this juxtaposition of text, archives, and footage of nature is the contemporaneity of MacLane’s writings on sexuality and nature. In a Q&A, the director expressed her intention to recall the sensuality and physical embodiment of her texts in the filmic form, engaging in a dialogue with them through time. However, for this review, I chose to reflect on a documentary that expands the concept of archival film, and which deeply moved me, as it resonates with my concerns as a scholar and a young woman: Yours in Sisterhood, directed and produced by Irene Lusztig (2018, 102 mins).