Les Insoumuses

After purchasing one of the first Portapak video cameras, Carole Roussopoulos became an independent videographer in 1970. A year earlier, she had co-founded the Vidéo Out collective with her partner Paul, amidst a rising tide of independent, autonomous and activist video groups driven by feminist, libertarian and far-left ideals. 

Confronted with frequent shortages of editing equipment, Carole started using the facilities at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where some of the earliest meetings of the Women’s Liberation Movement had been held. This brought her into contact with Parisian feminists. 

In 1974, two feminist activists—film and theatre actress Delphine Seyrig and her childhood friend Ioana Wieder, a translator—took part in one of Carole’s women-only video courses. Impressed by the potential of video and Carole’s approach to filming, they both became activist filmmakers. Using video meant they could shoot without a large crew or pre-production structure, giving them full autonomy. Where traditional film technicians and instructors (mostly men) were absent, feminists saw the promise of this new technology and embraced it.

Together with three other women—Claude Lefèvre-Jourde, Monique Duriez and Josée Constantin—Ioana and Delphine founded Les Muses s’amusent [Muses Have Fun]. The association described itself as “a group of women determined to denounce the stereotyped image and role of women portrayed in the media, and to respond through audiovisual productions (videos, photographs, slideshows with sound, cassettes)”.

The collaboration between Carole, Delphine and Ioana—and the work they produced together—eventually gave rise to Les Insoumuses.

Les Insoumuses would go on to found the Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir in 1982. Throughout the 1970s, they created fifteen films together, crediting themselves in various ways—individually, as a duo or trio, or occasionally as a quartet when other collaborators were involved. Although the credits were often brief or entirely absent, all three women contributed to the filmmaking process in one way or another, whether during shooting or in the editing room.

Carole, Delphine and Ioana were politically engaged feminists, either foreign-born or with experience living abroad, and they shared a deep awareness of the conditions faced by women and minorities around the world. They were attuned to various forms of oppression and united by a radically internationalist outlook.

Their videos addressed issues directly related to women and the body, such as abortion, sexual violence, gender relations and social labelling, while also offering sharp critiques of the mainstream media’s dominance, as seen in Maso et Miso vont en bateau. They were equally concerned with the plight of political prisoners, war, detention and torture, as well as broader questions of human rights, psychiatry and sexuality, particularly in relation to lesbian women, gay men and trans people.

Les Insoumuses created videos from within the feminist movement, in which all three were actively involved. Their vision was radical: a woman rebelling against the patriarchy, gender stereotypes and the traditional image of “muses”. The camera became a political tool—one they used to capture their own image and document struggles.

“The collaborative work of Seyrig, particularly her work with feminist companions Carole Roussopoulos and Ioana Wieder, exemplifies the emancipatory use of video as part of a shared political programme. The radical potential of their productions lies in their ability to combine humour, social critique and the construction of a feminist gaze” (Musas insumisas; “An Introduction” by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Giovanna Zapperi, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2019).