TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Double Take

Calamity, une enfance de Martha Jane Cannary

Rémi Chayé
2020 - France / Denmark - 1h25

Screenings : monday 22 - 10:00 am - Centre de congrès - Auditorium - presented by Guy-Baptiste Jaccottand - organiste

1863, America. In a wagon train heading west in search of a better life, Martha Jane's father injures himself. She now has to drive the family wagon and take care of the horses. It is a steep learning curve, but nevertheless Martha Jane has never felt a greater sense of freedom. And seeing as it's easier for riding horses, she has no qualms about wearing trousers.

After taking part in the conquest of the west, Calamity Jane became the main character in a show based on her own legend, The Wild West Show. “Historians don't tell us much about the early life of the woman who became Calamity Jane. The only thing we know is that she was the eldest child of a poor family who decided to head west in the early 1860s. (…). She lost her mother,who she was very close to, at the beginning of the journey. This trauma, her biographers say, caused a genuine feeling of abandonment. This is where the film starts”. (Rémi Chayé) “Deploying a dense and lively western imagery,combined with the meticulous representation of nature (suggesting inspiration from Miyazaki),wrapped up in a reasonably fauvist palette Chayé's film is a smorgasbord of adventures where feminism is not a moral and abstract element, but a very organic and carnal idea motivated by the thirst for life”. (Théo Ribeton; Les Inrocks) Rémi Chayé's second film after Tout en haut du monde (Long Way North), Calamity won the Cristal at the Annecy Festival.

CAST AND CREW

Cast : Salomé Boulven, Alexandra Lamy, Alexis Tomassian, Jochen Hägele
Voices : X
Screenplay : Rémi Chayé, Fabrice de Costil, Sandra Tosello
Editing : Benjamin Massoubre
Music : Florencia Di Concilio

Production : Maybe Movies, Noerlum Studios, 2 minutes

French distributor : Gebeka Films