El clítoris
2016 · 3m · Canadá
Directed by Lori Malépart-Traversy
Genres: animation, documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, provocative
An animated documentary narrates the history and functions of the clitoris, reclaiming its unique and important function: pleasure.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A three-minute animated essay on clitoral anatomy shouldn't work as agitprop, but Malépart-Traversy swings for it anyway—pure provocation dressed up as pedagogy, which is exactly the kind of genre collision most festivals would nervously pass on.
This sits squarely in the lineage of didactic animation and feminist essay film (think Candy Darling or Chloë Sevigny's essay shorts), but the restraint—letting biology speak for itself without didacticism collapsing into earnestness—is what marks this as formally considered work.
The decision to animate rather than document, to treat the clitoris as a formal compositional problem instead of a talking-head subject, is what lifts this from 'important message' to 'singular object'—every line choice becomes the argument.