2023-10-05 14:32:13
– “Everybody’s Perfect”, a tenth edition more queer than ever
Feature and short films, guest filmmakers, round tables and master classes are on the menu for the Geneva event.
Published today at 4:32 p.m.
“20,000 species of bees”, gender identity through the eyes of an 8-year-old child.
DR
We no longer remember the first edition of the Everybody’s Perfect festival very well. It was ten years ago, in fact more, the event having first been biennial and created in 2010, at a time when gender issues were not yet as discussed as they are today. From now on, the festival is completely part of the Geneva landscape and is being deployed in the city with a new appetite, without being assimilated to a niche event.
In her text presenting the program, the festival director, Sylvie Cachin, underlines the liveliness of queer cinematographic creation. This is also palpable in the shorts as well as in the feature films. From October 6 to 15, 28 feature films and just over 40 short films await the public. To make your way through a program that has the good taste of not being plethoric, you will have to rely a little on feeling, to the extent that almost all of the films are new, with a few exceptions. Among the latter, we can rewatch the recent “Marinette” by Virginie Verrier, which retraces the journey of football champion Marinette Pichon, particularly from the angle of acceptance by others of her homosexuality.
Discovered at the Berlinale, “20,000 species of bees”, by Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, questions gender identity through an 8-year-old little girl (Sofía Otero also received the performance prize there) , with a salutary and entirely surprising thematic flattening as a corollary. Also discovered in Berlin, “Green Night”, by Shuai Han, bets on a chance encounter in the heart of a Korean society that is still stifling and patriarchal.
Other films have previously passed through Cannes. This is the case of “Un prince”, by Pierre Creton, one of the events of the Quinzaine des filmmakers. Immersion in desire, exercise in bewitchment, according to numerous comments, the film is in any case unique in its approach. Among the unclassifiable, we can still recommend “Casa Izabel”, by Gil Baroni, which focuses on an isolated property where men, often married, live out their cross-dressing fantasies in the rigorist Brazil of the 70s.
And then on the side of documentaries, of which there are nine this year, let us mention at random “Le dot sur les i”, by Frédéric Chane-Son, a Swiss production collecting the testimonies of various intersex people. “Kokomo City,” by D. Smith, which gives voice to four transgender and black sex workers. Or “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power,” by Nina Menkes, which revisits certain sequences from cinema history to show the extent to which women have been dispossessed.
That being said, citing certain films amounts to overlooking others. And to be frank, browsing the “Everybody’s Perfect” program, almost everything seems worthy of interest. We could add to our panorama the superb “Je, tu, il, elle” by Chantal Akerman, the avant-garde works of Coni Beeson, or carte blanche to Manuela Kay, which is a sort of best-of of the Pornfilmfestival Berlin, of which she has been co-curator since 2007.
The festival is not just about cinema either, even if many invited filmmakers will talk about it at length. There are also parties, several round tables (such as “Intersex in the mirror” Saturday 7 at 3 p.m. in the Simon room at Cinémas du Grütli) and a Manuela Kay master class. Are we still forgetting any? Without a doubt. But you might as well judge on the spot.
Everybody’s Perfect, from October 6 to 16, Cinémas du Grütli and other locations.
Pascal Gavillet has been a journalist in the cultural section since 1992. He mainly deals with cinema, but he also writes on other fields. Especially science. As such, he is also a mathematician.More information@PascalGavillet
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