Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang/ Ultraviolette et le Gang des cracheuses de sang

Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang/
Ultraviolette et le Gang des cracheuses de sang
France, 2021, 74’
in French w/ Arm./Eng. subtitles

Director: Robin Hunzinger
Scriptwriters: Claudie Hunzinger, Robin Hunzinger
Producer: Milana Christitch
Editor: Benonit Quinon
Cinematographer: Gautier Gumpper
Sound: Marc Namblard
Music: Siegfried Canto
Production Companies: Ana Films, CICLIC with BIP TV

After the death of his grandmother Emma, Robin Hunzinger and his mother Claudie find a carefully preserved collection of letters, which Emma received from a girl called Marcelle. In the 1920s, Emma and Marcelle met at school in Dijon. Secretly, love blossomed between the two teenage girls, but after two years they parted ways. Marcelle developed tuberculosis and was admitted to a sanatorium, where her letters to Emma became increasingly fervent and desperate, and her rebellious behavior aroused the attentions of three other seriously ill young women.

Complementing the sparse photographs of the women, Hunzinger combines archive footage, avant-garde films, and music to create a sensuous, poetic atmosphere. We hear voiceover quotes from the eloquent letters of Marcelle, a daring young woman ahead of her time, who rejects adult life with its coarseness and restrictions, and goes her own way with a group of kindred spirits.

Awards

Beeld en Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award for Best Creative Use of Archive, IDFA, Netherlands, 2021; Mastercard Grand Prize and Audience Award, Ecrans Mixtes, Lyon, 2022; Honorable Mention, Brazilian International Documentary Festival É Tudo Verdade, Brazil, 2022; Special Mention, Peloponnisos International Film Festival, Greece, 2022; Honorable Mention, DOCAVIV, Israel, 2022; Special Mention, Biografilm festival, Bologna, Italy, 2022.

Robin Hunzinger

Born on April 27, 1969 in Colmar, Robin Hunzinger is a French documentary filmmaker. He is the son of artist and writer Claudie Hunzinger. After studying history and art history in Strasbourg, he began studying cinema in Jussieu with Jean Douchet, Jean Rouch and Bernard Cuau. At the start of the war in Bosnia, he went to Sarajevo in February 1993. It was in 1996, still in Sarajevo, that he met the producer Bruno Florentin with whom he wrote a film about the town of Goražde, Psychogeography of a Border. He addresses certain themes that will be found in all his subsequent films: war, the border, memory, nature, man facing the unthinkable. His films have been presented at numerous festivals: Cinéma du réel (Paris), Rotterdam International Film Festival, Beirut Festival, FIGRA etc. He is vice-president of the Guild of Reportage and Documentary Filmmakers, GARRD, from September 2019.

Filmography

Gorazde, Psychogeography of a Border (1998), Traces of War (1999), The Pioneers of the Landscape (1999), Journey In Between (2001), Memory Survey (2002), Praise of the Hut (2003), Natzwiller-Struthof: A French Memory (2004), Closing Your Eyes (2006), Where Are Our Lovers (2007), The Beast of the Vosges: Autopsy of a Rumor (2008), Our Comrade Tito (2010), Sarajevo: Our Resistance (2011), The Elusive Albert Kahn (2012), Towards the Cloud Forest (2015), Inventory Before Disappearance (2016), The Man Who Wanted to Know (2018), The Use of Forests (2019), Distancing (2021), Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang (2021).