Graduating from the prestigeous National Film and Television School in London with a fiercely critical retrospective on her years as a boarding school student, Kim Longinotto, left, has since gone from strenght to strength, documenting a wide array of women´s issues, often from places where others would not go, and on such controversial topics that others tend to find them too hot to handle. With approximately 15 films to her name, her oeuvre is now a much sought after good, adding sting and credibility to any film festival, world wide. Whichever among her films is shown, they never fail to provoke intense media and audience interest. Longinotto´s commitment to collaborative filmmaking with an all-women crew and her drive to portray strong women on-screen are particularly evident in her series of films about women in Japan (´The Good Wife of Tokyo,´ with Claire Hunt, ´Eat the Kimono,´ ´Dream Girls,´ ´Shinjuku Boys´ and ´Gaea Girls,´ with Jano Williams), 1991´s ´Hidden Face´ (also with Claire Hunt), about women in Egypt, and ´Divorce Iranian Style´ (1998) and ´Runaway,´ (2001) both taking their subject matter from deeply suppressed and exclusively female environments in Iran. Both these films were also co-directed with the Iranian anthropologist Ziba Mir-Hosseini.

´The day I will never forget´ sets itself apart from most other contributions to the often rather crude debate about female circumcision, aka female genital mutilation (FGM). Longinotto´s disgust with the practice is just as genuine and intense, but the typical offender vs. victim approach to this issue is nevertheless consequently avoided. In place of such absolutism, the film displays the young girls´ ambivalence, on the one hand clearly experiencing what they are about to go through as a betrayal and a breach of trust of what, until this point in their lives, has been their mothers´ unfaltering care and protection, on the other still wanting to be loyal and obedient to their parents, religion, traditions and entire culture. In addition, Longinotto introduces the audience to the mothers´ tendency to diminish the pain and the risks of wounding their daughters both physically and mentally, the fathers´ pride at maintaining this traidition and thus, in their belief, a key element of their cultural identity, the husbands-to-be´s die-hard resistance against allowing their brides to be ´reopened´ surgically, at much reduced risk of further complications, rather than by their own sexual penetration, and last, but not least, a breakthrough in the battle against female circumcision through allowing young women free legal aid to take their parents to court for not allowing them to decide for themselves whether or not they want to be circumscised.

In an interview with Niels Jacob Harbitz at the Nordic Festival for Short Films in Grimstad, Norway, in June, Longinotto emphasised the importance of always trying to communicate hope. -Of course, she said, -one gets both angry and sad, but rather than getting stuck in the problems, one should look ahead, for possible solutions. It is true that my film is about female circumscision, but it is also about the emergence of a broader feminist movement, about the first generation of African women who actually enlightens itself on issues like contraception, who refuses to be circumcised, and who opposes their mothers,´ and later, their husbands´ authority. In this perspective, the fight against female circumcision becomes a symbol and an indication that a much bigger and broader agenda is taking shape, that a rather more all-encompassing uprising is growing.

My method, Longinotto continues, -may well be compared to that of an anthropologist. Sometimes I have to spend a lot of time establishing sufficient trust to make the kinds of films I want, from the innermost spheres of people´s private lives. With ´The day I will never forget, however, it was different. The timing turned out to be perfect. The local discourse, on the issue of circumcision as well as on other women´s issues, both in Nairobi and in the rural areas, was obviously ripe and ready to meet the outside world with a surprising degree of openness. Hence, the film became marked by a level of intimacy and spontaneity that a more conventional anthropological approach probably would have missed out on. I tell stories. Science, on the other hand, anthropology included, discusses and analyses themes.

-African stories are often about heroes. Lumumba, Nkrumah, Senghor and Mandela. All men, and all heroes because of their public, political battles for freedom and independence. I try to show different kinds of heroes. The women in ´The day I will never forget´ demonstrate a courage, a patience and a tolerance I have never ever encountered, anywhere. Their battle is hidden, It deals with private, illegal, and thus even secret issues, it is about women´s right to physical self-determination. And even if the battle against female circumcision is being discussed publicly, the real battle is a case by case struggle, necessarily taking place behind closed doors. In my opinion, Longinotto, concludes, this does not make this battle any less heroic than the ones fought by Africa´s male population. If anything, quite the opposite.