Calamity, une enfance de Martha Jane Cannary

Many legends have been woven around the life of the Western heroine Calamity Jane, most of which she created herself. She must have been a master storyteller, impassioned by an irrepressible, often raw strength. “Calamity, une enfance de Martha Jane Cannary” tells how the girl Martha Jane became Calamity Jane, one of the few heroines in the history of the Wild West. In 1863, on a covered wagon trek to Oregon, 12-year-old Martha Jane takes responsibility for her younger siblings when her father is injured in an accident. She wants to be independent and able to solve any problem herself – so she learns to drive the wagon, exchanges her skirt for trousers and secretly practises lassoing. She is not intimidated by the mockery of the older boys, nor by the rejection of the girls who resent her for breaking out of her well-behaved “female” role. One night, when Martha Jane climbs onto a horse’s back for the first time and teaches herself to ride under the endless expanse of the starry sky, she experiences an exhilarating moment of absolute freedom. And it becomes clear: there is no turning back now, no matter how great the upcoming challenges may be.“Calamity” is the second feature film by Rémi Chayé, whose debut film “Tout en haut du monde” was screened at Fantoche in 2016. Both films are dedicated to strong female characters who courageously transcend restrictive gender norms. In “Calamity”, Chayé pulls out all the stops of the Western genre, from the prairie landscape suffused in breath-taking colours to the crazy chase, thereby light-heartedly breaking the male-dominated hero cult. At this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the film won the Cristal Award for Best Feature Film. (vb)