“Can one even fathom such audacity?” Claude Cahun wrote after the war. How can one believe that a couple of middle-aged Jewish women artists, of fragile health and bourgeois origins, stood alone against the Germans during the four years of the occupation of Jersey Island? Claude Cahun is one of the most unique figures in the Parisian avant-garde art scene. Together with Suzanne Malherbe, her lifelong partner, she adheres to and actively participates in the surrealist and anti-fascist revolutionary movements. But it is on the island of Jersey, where they settled in 1938, that their activist work unfolds. Claude and Suzanne conduct a poetic counter-propaganda—signed “The Unknown Soldier,” creating the impression of rebellion within the German ranks. They are the sharpshooters, using their spiritual weapons to urge soldiers to stop fighting. History proved them right: Jersey was peacefully liberated.
Les Francs-tireuses relies on texts in which Claude Cahun and Suzanne Malherbe recounted their war years. Remaining faithful to their actions and personalities, Emmanuelle Hutin freely draws inspiration from these writings to pay tribute to the courage of these resistance fighters, who have been rendered invisible by history.
