Carole Roussopoulos

Carole ROUSSOPOULOS (1945, Switzerland) was a Swiss film director and feminist primarily known for her pioneering early activist documentary films of France’s women’s liberation movement. She was active in Paris for most of her career, where, at the suggestion of Jean Genet, she purchased a Sony Portapak in 1970. Armed with this newly available tool, she joined the early wave of artists and activists who would seize on the technology’s radical potential for creating politically and artistically independent work. Documenting and giving voice to a wide range of social movements and underrepresented groups both in France and internationally, she leapt into the fray, creating dozens of tapes, organising forums and workshops and forming organisations such as the collective Vidéo Out. She also formed the Simone de Beauvoir Audiovisual Center with Delphine Seyrig (a frequent collaborator) and Ioana Wieder, the first media institution devoted to documenting the women’s rights movement. Together with Seyrig, she directed the 1976 documentary on women’s rights entitled S.C.U.M. Manifesto, based on the homonymous manifesto written by the radical feminist Valerie Solanas.

Filmography

(selection) F.H.A.R. (1971, short doc), Y’a qu’à pas baiser/Just Don’t Fuck (1971, short doc), Munich (co-dir. 1972, short doc), Messe pour un corps/Mass for a body (co-dir. 1975, short doc), Les prostituées de Lyon parlent/The prostitutes of Lyon speak (1975, doc), S.C.U.M. Manifesto (co-dir. 1976, short), Yvonne Netter, Avocate (1982, short doc), L’inceste, la conspiration des oreilles bouchées/Incest, the conspiracy of blocked ears (1988, short doc), Les hommes invisibles/Invisible Men (1994, TV short doc), Cinquantenaire du deuxième sexe: 1949-1999 (2001, doc)

More info: Wikipedia, Carole Roussopoulos