An epic in the making | 18.02.08
«Deportée Louise Michel» is a film for France 2 Television, (French National TV), about Louise Michel, a teacher, who was one of the main woman activist during la Commune de Paris (1873), when they lost the fight, she begged to be executed as her male friends, but instead was sent to New Caledonia, in deportation.
When she went back to France, 8 years later, she had become a legend… until the day she died, she held political conferences about anarchie.
At her funeral near Paris, there were more then 120.000 people!
In New Caledonia, she tried to learn everything she could about the kanak culture, as well as their language. (kanaks : the local people who were there before the French made a colony out of that island, near Australia).
When the kanaks rebelled (1879) against the French, she was one of the very few to be on their side, all the other « communards » standing against them.
Louise Michel, was a feminist, anti-colonialist, anarchist woman. Interested in everything around her, and known as having being extremely generous with everyone, giving away, always, everything she had, money, food, clothes…
She spent a lot of years in different jails in France, because of her political positions.
It is the time she spent in this deportation camp that will be told in the film.
The shoot will start in mid April and budget: 2, 8 million Euros.
The actress who will play Louise Michel is Sylvie Testud (picture to the right), a very famous actress in France, who just finished two films, one called La France, the other one a TV film about the life of the French novelist: Françoise Sagan.
It is a bit ironical, that the portrait of this historical French figure, will be shot by someone born in Vestmannaeyjar…