2020, 52′, directed by Claire Duguet, English.
Sunday 12 December at 20:00 Beirut time / 19:00 CET
Online screening
Followed by a discussion with
Claire Duguet, film director, on Zoom Platform.
Online event
Join Zoom Meeting on 12/12/21 at 20:00 Beirut time
Movie
The first female human character in the entire history of cartoons, she was also the first woman to have the leading role in a cartoon, since she was born in 1930. With those gorgeous legs, those huge bedroom eyes, her soft singer voice, Betty Boop is such a big hit! As she blew out 90 candles in 2020, the sexy little brunette and her legendary Boop-oop-a-doop has never grown old but is still an enigma. To the society of the 1930’s of her birth to today’s society which put her on the front page of the New Yorker as a way to denounce sexual harassment and saw the birth of the #Metoo movement: what image of the modern woman does Betty Boop project?
Helped by beautiful archives, we immerse into a 30s jazzy world and this entertaining and feminist documentary counts Betty Boop’s own story. The documentary takes another look at the myth of the cartoon icon with the interviews of: Jeni Mahoney, Max Fleischer’s great-granddaughter (he is Betty’s creator), Oscar awarded producer Lili Zanuch, famous stylist Chantal Thomass, and young committed artists Melissa Laveaux & Viktoria Modesta.
Film Director
Claire Duguet is a French writer-director, born in 1977. In 2001, when she was a cinematography student at the Louis Lumière School, she asked Agnès Varda, voluntarily met in the street, to work with her. The filmmaker gives her an appointment the next day at 7am! Over the years, a loyal friendship binds them together. Claire collaborates in the making of several films and installations of the artist until her latest film Varda par Agnès (2019). Between 2003 and 2007, camera in hand, she broadened her gaze and her knowledge of the world by traveling around the world, alongside the painter and photographer Titouan Lamazou, to film and make portraits of women. These years made a strong and lasting impression on her, especially in Afghanistan and eastern Congo, where she returned in 2011 to direct the road movie Africaines des Grands Lacs.
She wrote and directed three short fiction films and more than twenty documentaries for television: Absolument Trans from Lili Elbe to Lili Wachowski, Truffaut-Godard, scenario of a rupture about the impossible friendship between the two monuments of the New Wave, La turbulence Rodin a biopic of the first super star of the art world, An American named Kazan a portrait that investigates the ambivalent Elia Kazan, Betty Boop Forever a feminist reinterpretation of the animated icon in the post-metoo era, Boris Charmatz facing the Grand Palais dancing in the midst of the Covid pandemic, Queen Kidjo a joyful and engaged portrait of Angélique Kidjo. In 2019, at the Cannes Film Festival, she is a juror of the Queer Palm chaired by Virignie Ledoyen. The prize is awarded to Portrait of a young girl on fire by Céline Sciamma. She is a member of the 50/50 collective for parity, equality and diversity in cinema and audiovisual. Passionate about dramaturgy, Claire Duguet followed the script workshop at La Fémis in 2014 and the teachings of Yves Lavandier, before co-founding, in 2020, Félicité Production with Cecilia Rose to produce short fiction films. Her next documentary, produced by Causette Prod, looks at the feminist blast of King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes.
in partnership with U.S. Embassy Beirut
Beirut Art Film Festival 
