Les métiers dits « féminins » dans les films de Jean Benoit-Lévy

Abstract

Between the two World Wars, the French Educational League and the Regional Educational Cinema Offices, affiliated within the French Union of the Secular Educational Cinema Offices established a social use of a non-commercial cinema, the cinéma educateur. The educational cinema, with its after-school activities, was aimed at teens and adults in order to educate them to social hygiene and citizenship.Jean Benoit-Levy, who directed almost 350 films (fiction and non-fiction, short or long), is the main leader of this republican centre-left propaganda. Generally speaking, his cinema campaigns for the evolution of the place of women in the French society in relationship to the practice of a job. Considering that getting a paid job can allow women to define their identity and fulfil themselves is a quite progressive idea at a time when in France women’s right to vote is still in question.

Keywords

• adult education
• cinema
• labor
• propaganda
• secularism
• women