Friday, July 10, 2009

The Hermaphrodite Claude or Claudette



His parents named him Claude. For him the choice, since Claude, coming in the world, girl and boy at a time. She later became Claudette, sex worker, artisan of the love, diligence and passion for cycling. North Africa nights Pâquis, partitioning of the identity development, Sylvie Cachin camera captured this testimony outside the norm and created a first feature film noticed. After receiving the award for best film at Berlin Pornfilmfestival and the price of Mixbrazil Ida Feldman, "Claudette" was released in theaters romandes (Sputnik in Geneva and Lausanne Zinema).

In the beginning, there was this light, exchanged in a bar Pâquis in Geneva. This was in the late 90s, and Sylvie Cachin remembers: "I was immediately seduced by the light that shone in his eyes." In the eyes of Claudette, it yal'écume exhilarating life of a kaleidoscope, set by all facets of existence multiple, contradictory, human essence. "I wanted to turn my attention to the identity of gender, social conditioning, the male-female categorization," says the director. Claudette has allowed me to put these issues out. "But Sylvie Cachin will take time to smell ripe shooting, spread between Geneva and the Camargue, only starts in 2005. Behind the film, a long friendship is already welded.

"I did not so much to this film," says Claudette. Sylvie led me gradually. "For two years, the newspaper of the radiant sexagénaire was recorded on film, from its struggles for recognition of the prostitute (s) to the racing bicycle that she likes to participate. But above all, Claudette confides. She delivers her memories of childhood in a loving and tolerant family in Morocco. And then the coup de foudre, age de14 years to a woman a little older, who will introduce the world of prostitution, become his lover and his maquerelle. So when the family decides to return to Switzerland, tear leaves traces, and memories burn like the sun of Tangiers. "I do not do this job because I am a hermaphrodite. The starting point is the love, the love of what is not, "says Claudette. And it's an activity in which I feel women one hundred percent. "

Claudette does not reject its masculinity. "It's his Sylvie and film that allowed me to live my hermaphroditism openly, outside the world of prostitution. "Today, it advocates the acceptance of intersex people, and denounces the surgery performed on very young children, in order to finally classify a genre or another. "My body and my mind belong to me. Nobody can make these decisions for a newborn two weeks ago, neither a doctor nor a priest. For my part, if I was a boy, I'm simply there to talk about it, and if I was a girl, I would not have met my wife. "

Because yes, Claudette married Andrée. They married "white", in full awareness of the nature and desires of each and two children were born of their union. A family situation that is both simple and confusing, in contrast to the ideas about the world of prostitution. "By showing different facets of Claudette, I wanted to defuse this posture moralist who says that nature does not comply necessarily deviant, dirty" says Sylvie Cachin. And perhaps in this regard to the tender and without complacency that lies the greatest strength of the film. "I did not want to overlook, or look, she said. It was that Claudette could tell the truth, but I pushed myself to come over them. "One way to highlight the irresistible freedom that emerges this journey of life. "To me, a transgender or transsexual who assumes its nature is somewhat extroverted, willy-nilly ... ostensibly because it reveals that it is a woman, she lives a kind of coming out permanent. In this regard, it seems to me free. And it is this freedom that I wanted to meet. "

Claudette, documentary Sylvie Cachin, Zinema in Lausanne on 10 June, and the Sputnik in Geneva from June 18

Story Continues...

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