Release Year: 2005
French drama directed by Alessandro Avellis
Freely inspired by historical events, My Super 8 season recounts the birth of modern French gay identity.
The story of a friendship between two French activists in the early 1970s at the beginning of France’s gay rights movement. Marc is an attractive Parisian student who tries to organize other students to fight for gay rights; while his best friend, Julie, fights for working class issues before moving on to feminist and lesbian causes. In the midst of his activism, Marc battles with his policeman father and tries to build a relationship with Andre, a young factory worker who says he’s not gay, but can’t seem to keep out of trouble at various cruising spots around Paris. Meanwhile, Julie rebounds from her separation from her boyfriend, Stephane, by moving into a ‘women only’ residence and hooking up with one of the other residents.
“My Super 8 Season” is inspired by the story of the FHAR, the Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front, and dedicated to its leaders Guy Hocquenghem and Françoise d’Eaubonne (Guy Hocquenghem's book Homosexual Desire (1972) may be the first work of Queer Theory). The FHAR are known for having given radical visibility to homosexuals during the 1970s in the wake of student and proletarian uprisings of 1968, which had given little space to the liberation of women and homosexuals. Breaking with older homosexual groups which were more hidden and sometimes conservative, they asserted the subversion of the bourgeois and hetero–patriarchal state, as well as the inversion of chauvinistic and homophobic values common of the left and extreme left.
Director's statement about the film:
“My Super 8 Season” is my first feature film. It runs in Paris between May 68 and the early 70s. I have always been fascinated by that era that represents to me the birth of an international ideological movement based upon some fundamentals principles as freedom and pacifism. I have also been very influenced by the 60s and 70s cinema, for instance by directors such as Marco Ferreri, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and so on…Since 2000 I live in Paris and I was very soon involved in the story of the FHAR (Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire) which was the heart, with the MLF (Mouvement de Libération des Femmes) of the French sexual freedom movement. I realised that no films had been made about this crucial period that saw the birth of our current rights. Although appreciated by several producers, my project did not find any financing. So, I thought that this film that talks about freedom must be created in the freest way… and I decided to self-produce it. The casting was central to this film and it went on during two months. I was lucky to find a young and astonishing team, in particular the main leads. Because of the low-budget conditions, “My Super 8 Season” was filmed in nine days and I took care myself about the 70s costumes and decors, looking for vintage dress and orange accessories in the Parisian flea markets... In spite of that, the frenetic rhythm of shooting and its atmosphere were truly exciting. As a result, the story got more developed and some scenes were added at the last minute, played in improvisation or written in the middle of the night. After “My Super 8 Season”, I decided to give a more historical point of view of my first film, with the documentary “The revolution of desire” (2006) which achieves and concludes my personal research about those thrilling years.
Interesting film, made with very little money, that attempts to chronicle the advent of gay liberation in France, after the May 1968 students' uprising and general strike.
French with hardcoded English subtitles
Format: avi
Duration: 1:13:18
Video: 720x392, XviD, 1464kbps
Audio: 187kbps
File size: 893.3 MB
