Join CAMS on Wednesday, 6th from 5:30pm to 7:30pm in Gilman 479 for a screening of Corrine Fortier’s documentary Aboard the Abraden and post-screening discussion with director Corinne Fortier.
Aboard the Abraden (dir. Corinne Fortier)
This documentary made of words, noises, colors and songs takes us aboard the Abraden, a fishing boat in the Brittany region in France, where we partake in the daily lives of its three sailors, Thomas, Loïc and Jamal. Their day is punctuated by the quarter, trawl lines, meals, and fish landings. Despite the steady pace of work and its harshness, jokes, teasing and ribaldries abound. Gender differences (between the film director and the three sailors), hierarchical differences (between the captain and the two deckhands), and cultural differences (between one deckhand and the others) give way to an atmosphere of joyful camaraderie on the boat that fosters profound exchanges about the fisherman profession.
“Filming Sailors in Brittany (France) : A Female Gaze on Masculinity Gender, interrelation and process of filming”
In 2020, I embarked for two days on a fishing boat in Concarneau in France without knowing the three male Breton sailors who would welcome me onto their boat. Gender relations in this film are paramount, as I am a woman situated in a very masculine milieu. I am interested in how the filmmaking process can occasion revelations that escape the notice of both the director and the person being filmed. Even as I film, I don’t yet know what I’m truly filming, and that is the very reason why I film: to be surprised as filmmaker and filmed subject each learn something from the other while approaching their inner truth. My wish is that, despite any initial reservations, each of the sailors being filmed will be pleasantly surprised by what has happened because of our interaction and the camera’s transformative presence, learning something new about himself that had remained hitherto inchoate. I also hope that the spectator will witness this particular moment resulting from our interactions as they evolve over the course of the film and are intensified by the camera’s presence. Guided by Charles Baudelaire’s exhortation, “Let’s go to the unknown to find something new,” the film ponders the evolution of our relationship wherein the person filmed is on the same level as the film director who does not know what will happen. The fact that each sailor does the quarter in turn allows me to talk with each of them alone. This isolation in the silence of the night in the middle of the ocean allows each of them to confide in me about some past accidents and future aspirations as together we dive into the heart of what it means to be a fisherman today.
Corinne Fortier is a cultural anthropologist, psychologist, filmmaker, and researcher at the French National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS). She is also a member of the Social Anthropology Lab (LAS) (CNRS-EHESS-Collège de France-Universités PSL, Paris). Bronze Medal 2005 of the French National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS). She has conducted research on body, gender, and visual anthropology and conducts a seminar in anthropology at Collège de France. She is the director of Marjatta, a Finnish artist in Brittany (52 mns, 2017). She recently edited the book Le corps de l’identité. Transformations corporelles, genre, et chirurgies sexuelles, Paris, Karthala, 2022.
For more on her research and publications, see: http://las.ehess.fr/index.php?1916 and https://cnrs-gif.academia.edu/CorinneFortier