Our Body (Notre Corps)

Claire Simon, 2023, Documentary, 168 min.
In French with English Subtitles
Film introduced by Aubrey Gabel

French documentary titan Claire Simon observes the everyday operations in the gynecology ward of a public hospital in Paris. In the process, she questions what it means to live in a woman’s body, filming the diversity, singularity and beauty of patients in all stages of life. Through these many encounters, the specific fears, desires and struggles of these individuals become the health challenges we all face, even the filmmaker herself.

Watch the trailer.

London-born Claire Simon is a French filmmaker. Her work explores the limits between documentaries and fiction. In 1992, she made a documentary about children’s preschool games, Récréations, followed by Coûte que coûte, 800 km de difference:Romance, and Mimi. Concurrently, three of her feature films were shown at the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, and she won the prize of the French Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD) for God’s Offices. Her films have won many accolades at various festivals, including the Belfort Film Festival (Grand Prix in the fiction and documentary categories for That’s Just Like You) and the Venice Film Festival (Best Documentary for The Graduation).

Speaker

Aubrey Gabel is an Assistant Professor of French at Columbia University. She is a specialist in 20th- and 21st-century French and Francophone literature, culture, and visual media and is currently the chair of the “Comics and Graphic Albums” University Seminar.

This film screening is presented as part of the Columbia University Maison Française 2024 Film Festival, CINEMA/CARE. The Festival is produced and presented by the Columbia Maison Française and curated by Fanny Guex, and Shanny Peer, and Eva Martin. The full festival program can be found here.