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A gender-bending artist who, along with her step-sister - who was also her lover - pushed messages of resistance during Jersey's Occupation will be celebrated on the big screen after a local writer's script was picked up by producers.
Surrealist French photographer Claude Cahun, who is best known for her androgynous self-portraits, moved to Jersey in the late 1930s and lived through World War Two in St. Brelade, where Jonathan Socrates grew up.
A journalist and writer, Jonathan now lives in London but regularly visits the island. It was during one of those visits that he spotted the plaque commemorating Claude on the side of La Rocquaise - the house she lived in with her stepsister and partner, Suzanne Malherbe, known as Marcel Moore.
“I started researching her and discovered everything about her,” Jonathan said. “I thought it was something I should have learned about in school, something that the island should know and be proud of.”
Video: An exploration of Claude Cahun's St. Brelade home. (Jersey Heritage)
Jonathan soon started working on a script, focusing on Claude’s life during the Occupation. Claude and Marcel were part of the resistance against German forces and wrote anti-Nazi leaflets encouraging soldiers to questions their orders and to desert.
“They are unlikely heroes,” Jonathan says. “They were middle-aged, French immigrants, they were lesbian lovers and step sisters. All of those aspects were interesting to me. They led one of the longest campaigns of resistance, it’s a cultural crime they are not celebrated.”
Claude’s 'extraordinary story' caught the attention of producers, Evangelo Kioussis and Simon Baxter, of Mirror Productions. The producers will soon be releasing 'Vita and Viriginia', the true story of the relationship between Virginia Woolf and her only lover Vita Sackville-West, which inspired ‘Orlando’, starring Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, and Isabella Rossellini.
Pictured: Jonathan Socrates grew up in St. Brelade, where Claude and her lover, Marcel Moore, lived.
“I am always drawn to strong female protagonists who were ahead of their time, those who broke boundaries and defied conventions and achieved timelessness,” Mr Kioussis says, adding that the public is now calling for the same. “The timing for a movie about Claude is very poignant at the moment. Gender issues are very topical and people are wishing for female leads. We are not trying to exploit the trend - the project started seven years ago, but it’s gratifying that the timing is now just right.”
After four years of work, the trio is now getting close to filming. They were scouting potential locations last week and laying the ground work to get authorisations for filming. “We want to do things properly and make sure everyone is comfortable about us being here,” Mr Baxter explained.
They hope to film as much of the film in Jersey to make it as authentic as possible. But there is one location Jonathan really wants to be featured: St. Brelade’s Bay. “It’s the same view Claude would have seen and it feels very personal to me, I know it inside out. It’s a special location to me, as it was to Claude and Marcel.”
Pictured: St. Brelade's Bay will hopefully feature heavily in the movie.
The movie, titled 'Trespassers' will be directed by Swiss director Timo Von Gunten, whose short film 'La Femme et le TGV,' starring Jane Birkin, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Film at the 2017 Oscars. No word though on who has been cast as Claude – the announcement will be made in May during Cannes Festival - Mr Kioussis says they didn’t pick a “lookalike”, but someone who “embodies the fierce spirit of resistance."
In addition to a main cast of four leads, around 100 actors will be involved in the movie and islanders will also have the opportunity to appear as extras.
It is hoped the movie will start filming in September or October to be released in late spring next year. Mr Kioussis already has an idea for the perfect date: “The aspiration would be to premiere it in May 2020 for the 75th anniversary of the Liberation.”
Pictured: Claude Cahun's work is currently on display in six different exhibitions.
Claude Cahun’s works are gaining renewed attention lately. Australian contemporary artist Clare Rae spent a month-long residency in Jersey in 2017 to research Claude’s work, culminating in an exhibition in Melbourne and Jersey in September.
And now 21 original images of Claude are on display at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) in San Francisco as part of the ‘Show me as I Want to Be Seen’ exhibition, which presents a group of artists engaging in what the CJM describes as “the notion of self-presentation as a fluid and multifarious entity”.
Pictured: Jersey Heritage lent 21 pieces from their Claude Cahun's collection to the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) in San Francisco.
Jersey Heritage loaned the 21 pieces for the exhibition and Conservator Neil Mahrer carefully transported them for installation last month.
Val Nelson, Jersey Heritage’s Senior Registrar, said the exhibition is only the latest of Claude’s overseas adventures. Prints of her original images are currently on display in five other exhibitions and parts of the collection have previously gone to Tokyo, Sydney, Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, Copenhagen and New York.
“There is huge international interest in Claude Cahun and we are lucky to have the best collection of her work in the world. Our pieces have appeared in more than 50 exhibitions since we acquired the collection in 1995,” she said.
“Claude Cahun is so relevant at the moment. She was way ahead of her time – it’s quite incredible to think that she was creating this kind of work 100 years ago.”
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