International Competition Award: FUCK THE POLIS by Rita Azevedo Gomes

Georges de Beauregard International Award: FRÍO METAL by Clemente Castor

Special mention of the International Competition Jury: COBRE by Nicolás Pereda

French Competition Award: BONNE JOURNÉE by Pauline Bastard

Georges de Beauregard National Award: HORS-CHAMP, LES OMBRES by Anna Dubosc, Gustavo de Mattos Jahn

Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Award: DES MILLÉNAIRES D’ABSENCE by Philippe Rouy

Special mention of the Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Jury: L’AMOUR SUR LE CHEMIN DES RONCETTES by Sophie Roger

First Film Award: FANTAISIE by Isabel Pagliai

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: LOS CRUCES by Julián Galay

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

Claudia Cardinale Foundation Award: FERNLICHT by Johanna Schorn Kalinsky

Cine+ Distribution support Award in partnership with GNCR: MORTE E VIDA MADALENA by Guto Parente

Flash Competition Award: گل‌های شب ِدریا by Maryam Tafakory

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: A PRELUDE by Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: CONTROL ANATOMY by Mahmoud Alhaj

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: LENGUA MUERTA by José Jiménez

Alice Guy Award: ABORTION PARTY by Julia Mellen

Renaud Victor Award: BULAKNA by Leonor Noivo

Special mention of the Renaud Victor Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

High School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the High School Jury: MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT by Assaf Gruber

The Second Chance School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the Second Chance School Jury: JACOB’S HOUSE by Lucas Kane

Audience Award: LA JUVENTUD ES UNA ISLA by Louise Ernandez

International Competition Award: FUCK THE POLIS by Rita Azevedo Gomes

Georges de Beauregard International Award: FRÍO METAL by Clemente Castor

Special mention of the International Competition Jury: COBRE by Nicolás Pereda

French Competition Award: BONNE JOURNÉE by Pauline Bastard

Georges de Beauregard National Award: HORS-CHAMP, LES OMBRES by Anna Dubosc, Gustavo de Mattos Jahn

Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Award: DES MILLÉNAIRES D’ABSENCE by Philippe Rouy

Special mention of the Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Jury: L’AMOUR SUR LE CHEMIN DES RONCETTES by Sophie Roger

First Film Award: FANTAISIE by Isabel Pagliai

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: LOS CRUCES by Julián Galay

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

Claudia Cardinale Foundation Award: FERNLICHT by Johanna Schorn Kalinsky

Cine+ Distribution support Award in partnership with GNCR: MORTE E VIDA MADALENA by Guto Parente

Flash Competition Award: گل‌های شب ِدریا by Maryam Tafakory

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: A PRELUDE by Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: CONTROL ANATOMY by Mahmoud Alhaj

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: LENGUA MUERTA by José Jiménez

Alice Guy Award: ABORTION PARTY by Julia Mellen

Renaud Victor Award: BULAKNA by Leonor Noivo

Special mention of the Renaud Victor Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

High School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the High School Jury: MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT by Assaf Gruber

The Second Chance School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the Second Chance School Jury: JACOB’S HOUSE by Lucas Kane

Audience Award: LA JUVENTUD ES UNA ISLA by Louise Ernandez

A Prelude opens with the account of a wrong—the refusal to let a trans woman into a lesbian bar—righted by an act of solidarity—the DJ, whose guest she was, refuses to perform. We’re in a club in the Shibuya district of Tokyo that’s now a venue for parties organised by queer-inclusive groups in response to this event. A small group listens attentively to the woman who is telling the story as she moves through the space. Later, we find them in another club at Narita airport, famous for the protest movements it’s hosted since the 1960s. Wendelien von Oldenborgh uses the tunnel that leads there to symbolically connect these two major centres of resistance to authoritarianism and to get people thinking and moving. A Prelude continues a conversation that began in Of Girls (FID 2022) with a group of artists, academics and performers, some of whose faces are recognisable here. Writer Fumiko Hayashi is brought back along with filmmaker and actor Kinuyo Tanaka, for her film Onna Bakari no Yoru (Girls of the Night, 1961), in which she boldly tackled the issue of sex work. The breadth of A Prelude lies in the way it brings together eras and works of art, finding echoes in the thinking of these major figures of Japanese literature and cinema in contemporary queer feminist movements, and intelligently addressing a possible convergence of struggles. From one dance floor to the next, the film unfolds through this collective wandering—a gentle peripatetic stroll that gives form to the to-and-fro of thought. When the little troupe emerges from the tunnel and disappears into the distance, their words continue to resonate close to us. They’re just the prelude to another conversation yet to come.


Louise Martin Papasian

Interview

Wendelien van Oldenborgh

With A Prelude, you’re pursuing the work you began in Japan with of girls (FID 2023) on the dialogue between contemporary voices and Japanese feminist figures of the past—in this case actress and director Tanaka Kinuyo and writer and poet Fumiko Hayashi. What prompted this new project?

In the process of making of girls I discovered that Fumiko Hayashi not only has a very interesting feminist writing practice, she also voluntarily spent time in Indonesia as part of the “Pen Brigade” during the Japanese occupation there. These facts don’t exclude each other of course, but it does feel strange or unfortunate when a class conscious feminist voice seems uncritical of the repressive military regime, which was brutally expanding Japanese dominance in Asia. I then felt like looking into various women artists in that period coming from the three nations who were in conflict over the territory of the large Indonesian Archipelago: the Dutch who were loosing their long held colony, which the Japanese invaded in ’42, and the Indonesians in the end phase of their struggle for independence. I am currently working on a longer film project which takes as a departure point this triangle and three female authors from that time period who resisted dominant patriarchal and nationalist politics, and connecting this to contemporary collective movements waging a similar struggle. This project focusses on transnational solidarity from a queer feminist perspective. A Prelude is literally a prelude towards that work in progress, and at the same time it was a center piece for a large exhibition I was making for an art centre in the south of Japan called Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media: YCAM. Working with the curator there, Leonhard Bartolomeus, who is Indonesian, we titled the exhibition “Dance Floor as Study Room” and I could also spatially explore the idea of the dance floor as a political space and space of resistance, which is another clear trope in A Prelude.

The film’s locations and the struggles that took place there are also the subject of the film. A club in Tokyo, another set at Narita airport, and the tunnel leading to it. Could you tell us about them?

As much as I wanted to bring into view some amazing female artists who were struggling for their place in a male dominated art world at the time, I wanted to link them to a contemporary queer feminist movement. Starting with the queer and femme oriented Waifu party and its back story—which we learn about in the film—I found it extremely exciting that the female collective that organises Waifu, and its sex-positive counterpart Slick party, is committed to organise their raves at locations of resistance and protest. The earliest Waifu parties took place at Aoyama Hachi and Kinone Pension at Narita Airport became the host for two issues of Slick. Especially Kinone is sensational: squeezed between the runways it is a house of activists from the decades long fight against the construction of the airport, widely known as the Sanrizuka struggles. The group just didn’t give up their ground and the airport had to be built around it.

We see a small group of people—academics, activists, artists, performers…—circulating and chatting, some of whom were already present in of girls. How did you go about casting them?

We basically continued the conversation which was started with the filming of girls and the public programming around my solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo in 2022. At that time I had looked for queer feminist movements, reading groups and individuals to share space and resource of my exhibition, and got to know the beautiful people I made of girls with. I just felt it was worth to continue working with the same exciting and interesting individuals, who also had connected to each other in various new ways since that time.

They discuss personal experiences, artistic references and events in contemporary Japanese history. How did you work out the content of these discussions?

It was part of the conversations we were already having. Maybe with the addition of the films by Kinuyo Tanaka, which I had come across in the meantime and just loved to bring into the mix.

The film is based on recorded conversations between these people. How do you organize the shooting in relation to these dialogues? Are they partly improvised?

All conversations in the film are improvised, or maybe it might be called “authentic”: they took place during filming, which is the way I have been developing my films for a long time. The shoot actually generates these conversations, they are not rehearsed or recorded before. There is preparation where we familiarise ourselves with each other’s knowledge and I set up the scenes accordingly.

The camera moves slowly, seeming to glide from one conversation to the next. Could you tell us about the image work?

I am always interested in connections and overlap between seemingly disconnected issues. In this case I thought that if the camera keeps moving smoothly and continuously the idea of these connections would come within the image as well. Even if I cut quite brutally between the different locations and scenes.

At one point in the film, this recording set-up is broken by the intrusion of a sequence in which Andromeda and aliwen replay a scene from Kinuyo Tanaka’s film Girls of the Night in lipsync. Why this choice?

Kinuyo Tanaka’s film called Onna Bakari no Yoru in Japanese, which quite literally means something like: “night of just women” has generally been titled internationally: Girls of the Night and is sometimes referred to as Girls of Dark (which I particularly like as a phrase) is a master piece. As a 1961 film by a pioneer female director, talking about sex work in a far from moralistic way and about womanhood in its various and contradictory forms, is already remarkable. But that it is done within a the form of a classic and very accomplished melodrama in the style of the Japanese studio cinema of the 1950-’60 is so unusual, I really wanted to have it entering the work in one way or another. Especially this scene, which I read as a brilliant entering of Marxist analysis by the sex worker protagonist who has been beaten up by her female colleagues at the factory where she was given work to “return to the decent world”. An interesting fact perhaps is that Kenji Mizoguchi—whom Kinuyo Tanaka dated at some point in her life—made a film in 1948 in which Kinuyo stars as the main character, called Women of the Night, which has a very different moral and politics.

Andromeda, who is an amazing drag performer as well as a publisher and community organiser, expressed the desire to perform a scene of the film as a drag act—to lipsync it—and we just thought we’d try it out. Drag is anyway based on melodrama, which came up in the conversations we had. Already prominent in of girls, I knew aliwen as a very convincing performer for the screen. Now it turned out that besides being an accomplished photographer, a writer, curator, and currently doing her PHD in Cultural Studies at Waseda—a prestigious university in Tokyo—she was also interested in drag. I found it just fun when the two of them mentioned their admiration for Girls of the Night whilst on the way towards the location at the airport, that then they would be suddenly be seen acting it out themselves. After which we meet them having a very personal conversation at Kinone Pension, about drag…

Interview by Louise Martin Papasian

Technical sheet

  • Script:
    Andromeda Oliver, Aliwen Munoz, Yoshiyuki Ishikawa, Hanna Hirakawa, Chelsea Szendi Schieder, Yiqing Yiqing, Midori Morita, Kanae Tanikawa, Takeru Arai
  • Photography:
    Yukiko Iioka
  • Editing:
    Wedelien van Oldenborgh
  • Music:
    Lina Campanella
  • Sound:
    Young Chang Hwan, Junji Nakae
  • Cast:
    Andromeda Oliver, Aliwen Munoz, Yoshiyuki Ishikawa, Hanna Hirakawa, Chelsea Szendi Schieder, Yiqing Yiqing, Midori Morita, Kanae Tanikawa, Takeru Arai
  • Production:
    Natsuko Odate (Yoshiko Isshki Office)
  • Contact:
    Wendelien van Oldenborgh
  • Subtitles:
    French, English

Filmography

  • Wendelien van Oldenborgh

    • Maurits Script, 2006, 67'
    • Sound Track Stage, 2008, 23'
    • No False Echoes, 2008, 30'
    • Lecture/Audience/Camera, 2008, 28'
    • Maurits Film, 2008, 45'
    • Instruction, 2009, 31'
    • Bete & Deise, 2012, 41'
    • La Javanaise, 2012, 25'
    • Beauty and the Right to the Ugly, 2014, 56'
    • From Left to Night, 2015
    • Prologue: Squat/Anti-Squat, 2016, 37'
    • Cinema Olanda Film, 2017, 17'
    • Two Stones, 2020, 60'
    • Hier., 2021, 27'
    • obsada, 2021, 34'
    • of girls, 2023, 43'