Berlin International Film Festival 2006

"LOVE OTHER" - The Story of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore.

Director: Barbara Hammer.

Cahun and Moore's work presages later lesbian and feminist artistic practice with its emphasis on identity and the use of photomontage and staged photographs. "Love Other" presents their work in Jersey as a private activity, recovered only when their effects were auctioned in a house clearance sale and the two women are recalled in amiable interviews with local residents as a pair of eccentric outsiders. Cahun, however, had studied Literature and Philologie at the Sorbonne and they were active members of surrealist circles in Paris during the '20's and '30's having published an autobiographical essay 'Aveux non avenus' in 1930 and were founding members of 'Contre Attaque' along with Breton and Bataille.

As anti-fascists, (in US MacCarthyite terminology they would certainly have been defined as 'premature anti-fascists') it is surprising that it took so long for them to come to the attention of the German occupiers of Jersey during World War 2. The German occupation of the Channel Islands was a nasty affair, including transports of slave labour to the islands and the deportation and imprisonment from local people. On Jersey, 20,000 troops garrisoned an Island community of only 40,000. Cahun and Moore's home was adjacent to one of the big hotels requisitioned as barracks by the Germans and their reaction was astonishingly provocative. Translating radio news from the BBC into German and other languages, they circulated printed flyers by secreting them in the German barracks, under ashtrays, in soldiers' backpacks and even planted a cross bearing an anti-fascist message in the soldiers' cemetary. Eventually arrested, they were tried for their resistence activities and given a series of sentences, ranging from imprisonment to death. The Head of the Occupying Forces reported to Berlin that they were 'the worst kind of Jews' and a reprieve was only forthcoming as the end of the war became inevitable and the local head of the civilian administration intervened on their behalf. Cahun was to die on Jersey in 1954. Her partner Marcel Moore (Suzanne Malherbe) survived her, living as a recluse on the island.

The documentary left me asking one question, which was why they chose to move the permanent move from France to Jersey in 1937 and whether this was intended as a long term decision?

A useful starting point for further information on Cahun and Moore's life of Jersey can be found on the Jersey heritage Trust website: http://www.jerseyheritagetrust.org/collections/fame/cahun.html

The Frye Museum in Seattle has recently staged an exhibition (September 05-February 06). The catalogue may provide a starting point for anyone interested in their earlier activities, though we have not seen a copy. Hammer's documentary is worth a screening on any tv station with an interest in gender issues, art and culture, or for inclusion in library and academic video collections.