Je Suis En Danger (I Am Safe)
*TRIGGER WARNING - S/A, HARRASSMENT*
Je Suis En Danger (I Am Safe) is a 3-minute experimental film based on a manifesto created by myself and my colleagues Kate Lovrinov and Fin Walker alongside the manifesto itself and a cover page. The eventual goal of the production was to make a statement on the prevalence of violence against women in today’s society, and the widespread obliviousness and ignorance surrounding it in the wake of a UN Women UK survey report stating that 97% of women aged 18-24 (and 80% of all women) have faced sexual harassment*. To highlight this, we created a completely female narrative perspective through 3 unrelated but overlapping stories of young women in harrowing but normalised circumstances, and created an allegory as to how the world seems to read and present them.
This film demands an active spectatorship and viewing of the film’s manifesto and cover letter (See Below) in order to be able to take the most away from the piece, as well as to gather all the information you can on the contexts and perspectives of the film.
*APPG for UN Women UK (2021) Prevalence and reporting of sexual harassment in UK public spaces United Kingdom https://www.unwomenuk.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/APPG-UN-Women-Sexual-Harassment-Report_Updated.pdf
Our Manifesto
1 – All roles are to be shared and collaborative
This is to ensure everyone has a similar experience, input and creative impact on the piece, and that everyone will take part in every part of filmmaking.
2 -All equipment is to be self-source and none-HD
Everything used in the shoot will be our own or that of close friends, ensuring no outside interference into how we make this film.
3 -There will be no male protagonist or male narrative POV
Enough films show the male POV, we don’t need any more.
4 -The film’s exhibition will question the relationship between what we are shown vs. what’s actually happening
Through the use of a language barrier, we can show the difference and encourage active spectatorship to reveal what’s actually happening.
Our Cover Letter
There can often be a big difference between what you are told and shown about a situation, and what is actually happening in front of you, the only difference between the two being the participation of an active spectator. With our piece, we wanted to question the difference between what we are told, and what we can actually see, and to investigate and question an event as we watch it unfold beyond a language barrier. Would you believe someone telling this story as it’s told to you now?
In recent years, the issue of sexual assault and harassment has been continuously highlighted and brought to the forefront of social issues, predominantly through social media. A survey carried out earlier in the year found that 97% of women in the UK have been sexually harassed – a figure that shocked (predominantly male swathes of) the British public.
It has become normalised in society for women to be catcalled, checked out and objectified without calling it what it is – sexual harassment.
This is a deeply personal and sensitive topic for almost all, if not all women. We explored this idea through experimental filmmaking techniques surrounding narrative, production and exhibition, allowing us to explore the topic in a personal yet abstract manner, giving it the respect it deserves. We hoped the language barrier the audience are faced with could in some way demonstrate the difference between women’s feelings towards a situation and how men perceive some signs as a message to continue the abuse.
We wanted to make a truly independent piece, sourcing and using our own equipment, using non-HD physical formats like Mini-DV, crafting a personal, home-movie-esque piece of voyeuristic cinema. The hand-held shake and aged format brings the film towards and possibly even beyond cinema verité, a hyperreality of such, using truly authentic video and audio yet entirely changing what it has to say through it’s exhibition and editing, again suggesting how we as a society and media often rush to change the narrative to what suits the moment best.
Even through these times, the film was entirely collaborative, with everyone working on every stage, and when on set, each of us trying each role, in order to make the piece as personally crafted as possible, producing something we’re very proud of.
We desperately need more examples of overtly uncomfortable cinema, spanning across narrative based and experimental film, long and short form, that doesn’t hide from the issues that our art helped affirm and weave into the fabric of pop culture, the media, and society itself.