A Feminist Media Review: Questioning State-Commissioned Representation

Since 1940, the Swiss Federal Council commissioned film newsreels (Ciné-journaux suisses) that were screened weekly as pre-show films in cinemas across Switzerland. These short features covered social, cultural, sporting, and political topics in the three national languages—German, French, and Italian—until the series ended in 1975.

For the production of the film Cinéjournal au féminin (1980), Lucienne Lanaz (b. 1937) and Anne Cuneo (1936–2015), spent four weeks analyzing archival footage from the film newsreel to to examine how women were represented. Their findings were damning: “The Cinéjournal suisse contains approximately 9,000 segments, only 300 of which focus on women,“ wrote Anne Cuneo in 1980. Cinéjournal au féminin is a montage film that compiles and critically comments on a selection of these contributions. In doing so, it highlights the patriarchal bias of the state-produced newsreel.

Erich Liebi and Urs Bolliger were also involved in the film; the archivist of the film newsreel, George Bartels, can be seen in the centre of this image of the shooting.

“Our script deals with the presence and absence of women in the film newsreel.”

Anne Cuneo, Travelling, 1980

In the film newsreel, women were primarily portrayed in stereotypical roles—as housewives, mothers, models, or stars—often accompanied by misogynistic commentary. The conservative portrayal of women remained largely unchanged throughout the 35-year production period of thenewsreel. Lucienne Lanaz and Anne Cuneo also raise the question of who and what was left invisible.

“Sartre shares the frame with Simone de Beauvoir, yet she is not mentioned at all —even in the narration, she simply does not exist.”

Anne Cuneo, Travelling, 1980

“In the newsreel, only heads of state, prominent figures, celebrities, and extraordinary events are featured. And personalities are shown arriving at the airport or during a press conference, not in their daily lives. That is not to say that everyday life is completely ignored in the swiss film newsreels– but it is a rarity and is never seen as a topic in its own right.”

Anne Cuneo, Travelling, 1980

"The near-total absence of intellectual and working women, as well as the exclusion of the working class as a subject in Cinéjournal suisse."

Anne Cuneo, Travelling, 1980

In 1980, Travelling, a magazine published by Cinémathèque Suisse, devoted an entire issue to the film. Anne Cuneo contributed a remarkable essay on the film's creation and on the analysis of the two directors.

Anne Cuneo, Lucienne Lanaz, and a fictional journalist, played by Therese Bernhard, appear in the film themselves. They contrast the absence of a diverse and nuanced portrayal of women in the official media with three different, self-determined and active female characters. At the end of the film, representatives of other marginalised groups, who had also been excluded from the film newsreel, appear

“In our final scene, foreign women, employees and workers say that ‘they weren't mentioned either’.”

Anne Cuneo, Travelling, 1980

Through their feminist media critique, these women reclaim narrative authority and assert their right to tell their own stories from their own perspective.

“There were men who couldn’t stand the idea of me becoming someone important, of being someone important.  Today, it's more natural for a woman to follow her own path, but I can tell you that it wasn't like that in the 1960s and 1970s. You have to break free from this culture and, that takes time. This film was a way to explore what could be done to change these structures even a little.”

Lucienne Lanaz, video interview, 2023

Many female directors of the 1970s and 1980s recall struggling to finance their films or access male-dominated institutions and networks. This was particularly evident in the case of Cinéjournal au féminin. In the interview, Lucienne Lanaz recalls the difficulties of financing the film project. She quotes a letter she sent to Ursula Stein in Budenheim in 1978, hoping to secure financial support from Germany.

“The entire production issue does not look promising in Switzerland, as the material of the weekly Swiss pre-show films is partly state-owned and the men behind it do not like being criticised and ridiculed. Swiss German television has already rejected a co-production, laconically commenting: ‘We're not interested in the project.’”

Letter from Lucienne Lanaz to Ursula Stein, 21 July 1978

In his response, the television editor in charge criticized the directors for lacking a critical-analytical approach and for being too subjective.

These financial difficulties forced Anne Cuneo and Lucienne Lanaz to work under precarious conditions, often unpaid, and sometimes even invest their own money. Anne Cuneo also refers to multiple professional and family burdens, as both directors were also in charge of their children, time-wise and financially. “As both heads of household, we could only work on our project part-time, the other part being necessary to ensure our survival.”

The Cinémathèque suisse archives contain numerous reviews of the film. An article in the Neue Zürcher Nachrichten praises the directors’ critical analysis of the media, which shows how the one-sided use of the mass-media reflects the power structures of society. In the newspaper 24 heures, one critic is impressed by how the film reveals the sexist discourse of seemingly innocent images.

As the two directors point out, this critical approach to representation and ideology in the film newsreel could also be applied to other subject areas. The newsreel is now accessible via Memobase, the national research portal for Switzerland's audiovisual cultural heritage.

“We firmly believe that Swiss film newsreel is a real treasure trove for the study of all ideological superstructures in their specifically Swiss manifestations - we hope that our approach to women will serve for further research on this matter, which is an essential part of our country's cultural heritage.”

Anne Cuneo, Travelling, 1980

The film Cinéjournal au féminin is available for streaming online. More information can be found at artfilm.ch.