A Piece of Sky (Une Part du Ciel)

A Piece of Sky is a story about the dignity of two
women, dignity that not even the toughest trials can crush. It is also a story
about two social environments, the main goal of which, it seems, is to destroy dignity
and trample down the humanity in those who live under such circumstances.
Joanna (fiercely portrayed by Séverine Caneele, from Dumont's Humanity)
is a former factory worker now trapped for unknown reasons inside the four
walls of a women's prison; Claudine (Sophie Leboutte), who still works
in the factory, is trapped between loyalty toward her incarcerated colleague
and fear for her own safety. The faces of the women in prison and the faces of
the women on the assembly line are virtually identical: showing an unhealthy
pallor, downcast with disappointment, wrinkled with worry, and wrapped in
silence. The bodies of the prisoners and workers are also similar: stooped,
tired, slow, squeezed into uniforms. The uniforms in the prison are the same as
the uniforms in the factory: drab colours, stained, wrinkled. The prison walls
and the factory walls compete to see which can be colder, which can crush the
will to live more effectively, which can cast a darker shadow. Factory and
prison, prison or factory; the administrations in both institutions follow the
same degenerate logic and supplement each other perfectly: one deals with the
criminalisation of the social struggle even as it feeds the other, whose
responsibility is to stifle original expression and so return the favour to the
first, for there is no use for idiosyncrasies on the assembly line. Scenes
recorded in the prison alternate with scenes recorded in the factory to produce
an inexorably monotonous-yet never boring-rhythm. Both environments, the re-education
factory and the exploitation factory unrecognisably merge into one, a symbol of
the brutal face of capitalism and of the conflagration of such notions as
liberty, brother- and sisterhood, and solidarity, which cannot find a context
where they will not be tarnished through bitter compromise.
What else could we expect from this author, the young film-maker Bénédicte
Liénard from Brussels, who served her apprenticeship as assistant director
to the brothers Dardenne (Rosetta, Son), and imprinted her own
documentary film creations with burning social and political commitment. The
experiences she acquired by simply documenting social shame in Western Europe
have been used to great effect in the filming of her first feature. The scenes
were shot on location, in a factory and a prison, with non-professional
actors-workers and prisoners. What at first glance seem to be rigid conceptual
forms (long, static scenes, exclusively cold colours, the absence of any
background music, looks and gestures in place of dialogue, the story driven
along smoothly outside the conventions of cause and effect) eventually begin to
transcend, demolish and critique conventional forms of representation and
narrative, thus exposing the engaged political agenda clearly, free from ideological
traps.
The attempt to combine subtle, poetic form with strong political commitment
usually means the latter gets sacrificed. Maybe this is the reason why Abbas
Kiarostami, known primarily as a poet of film, discarded his famous poetic form
in his last two films (ABC Africa, 10) and pared his expression down to
video so as to more clearly outline his political wrath, which, though present
in previous work, had been woven into an aesthetic of dazzling images and
unique dramaturgy. Liénard's success is so much more worth admiring, for her
political thought, uncompromising defence of the oppressed, and consistent and
thoroughly justified condemnation of a system unworthy of humanity, take the
foreground, despite the radical form of the film. Attached to 90 minutes of
images that hardly reveal a sky (let alone any sun), the title of the film may
seem ironic, even cynical. Or perhaps not. It presents a lesson in pride,
telling us we have to fight for our own piece of sky, tear it away from the
clouds and wait for the gloom to open up on its own; this is the piece of sky
that occasionally appears above the two women in the film. The first time this
occurs, just for a moment, when one of the imprisoned women breaks away from
reality, closes her eyes, and hovers over the prison, dancing dreamily to music
that may be playing only in her head. And then it happens somewhat later, this
time a bit longer, when Joanna, in solitary confinement, bursts into tears and
the camera shivers and blinks, veiling the sight with a black curtain, as if it
cannot stand to see a person so destroyed. But then it looks back anyway, where
we dare not look. And it holds its gaze for so long that we stop feeling
uneasy.
Jure Meden

Written and directed by: Bénédicte Liénard
Producers: Donato Rotunno, Eddy Geradon-Luyckx, Jacques Bidou, Jospeh Rouschop,
Marianne Dumoulin
Cinematographer: Helene Louvart
Cast: Séverine Caneele, Sofia Leboutte, Josiane Stoléru, Naima Hireche, Annick
Keusterman, Yolande Moreau, Gaëlle Müller, Béatrice Spiga, Olivier Gourmet,
André Wilms.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with
director Bénédicte Liénard.

Organisation: City of Women
In co-operation with: Slovenska kinoteka
With the support of: Adria Airways, Ministrstvo za pravosodje, Zavod za
prestajanje kazni Ig, Institut Français Charles Nodier

Fri., Oct. 10, at 13.00
City of Women at the women's prison in Ig: Screening of Une Part du
Ciel, followed by a conversation with the director (closed screening)