Monique Wittig: Twenty Years Later / Monique Wittig: Vingt ans après

March 18, 2023

Filmmakers respond to Les Guérillères, Monique Wittig’s 1969 novel—for Oriana, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz sets her film in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, while Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames takes place in New York after a “social-democratic war of liberation.” With shorts by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (Mouth to Mouth) and Vivienne Dick (Staten Island).

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Oriana
Born in Flames
Mouth to Mouth

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Oriana
- Saturday, March 18 4:30 PM
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
Puerto Rico, 2022
In Beatriz Santiago Muñoz’s most recent film, Monique Wittig’s experimental novel Les Guérillères is transported to Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. With shorts by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (Mouth to Mouth) and Vivienne Dick (Staten Island).
Born in Flames
- Saturday, March 18 7:30 PM
Lizzie Borden
United States, 1983
Restored 35mm Print

“This explosive work offers a speculative, feminist polemic set in a potential future that mirrors both the present in which it was made and ours. . . . [Lizzie] Borden’s fevered 1983 film is absolutely one we should be watching right now” (Yasmina Price, Vulture).

Lizzie Borden and Mel Y. Chen in Conversation

Monique Wittig: Twenty Years Later / Monique Wittig: Vingt ans après

March 18, 2023

“They say, If I take over the world, let it be to dispossess myself of it immediately, let it be to forge new links between myself and the world.” —Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

As part of UC Berkeley’s conference on Monique Wittig (1935–2003), we present two feature film responses to Les Guérillères, Wittig’s 1969 experimental novel. In relation to her film Oriana, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz reflected: “I have been in love with this text for a very long time, since I first read it at nineteen. I was and still am enthralled with its way around language and form. I wanted to follow its questions into visual language and radical feminist transformation. But as I really had no answers, the work presented itself to me as an open experiment. . . . I could not have imagined all the ways in which it would force me to rethink myself.” Lizzie Borden originally planned to name Born in Flames after Les Guérillères, before settling on the title of the song Mayo Thompson wrote for her film. She wrote: “I wanted a driving, rhythmic track to run simultaneously with speeches, so they didn’t have to be listened to. I hoped the words could work subliminally. The film is about a multiplicity of voices, so even if you hear some words, it’s enough. The message, such as it is, is about the need for action. . . . [M]any issues addressed in the film haven’t gone away. Economic issues, Sandra Bland, the murders of Black men, women’s issues, gender issues. I’m incredibly angered and saddened by the fact that it has been more than thirty years since I made the film and there’s even more rampant police brutality, increasing homelessness, poverty.”

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Organized by William M. Burton, Ty Blakeney, Department of French; Kate MacKay, Kathy Geritz, BAMPFA. Cosponsored by the Department of French at UC Berkeley in conjunction with the conference Monique Wittig: Twenty Years Later / Monique Wittig: Vingt ans après.