Femmes Machines, Mechanised Women

July 1995. The National Factory (Fabrique Nationale - F.N., Belgium), one of the most florishing industry of the walloon region in Belgium, is not anymore what it was No more "mechanised women" are working there, the factory is not national anymore and only a few one thousand industrial workers still have a job in the factory. but where did the "mechanised women" disappear ?
And who remembers the long-lasting strike they launched in February 1966 ? An investigation and a reconstitution on the spot based on testimonies of several witnesses as well as on scarce archives - pictures and tv features. a film designed to explain a double enigmatic disappearance : the vanishing of "mechaised women" and that of the memory of their strike.
This film-memory wants to raise attention on a women's strike that took place in 1966 at the National Factory where, for the first time, in Europe women workers were claiming "equal pay for equal work" as stated by article 119 of the Treaty of Rome. The film is based on a recollection of deeds and claims of several actresses and actors : the mechanised-women, workmen, employees, trade unionists, politicians, journalists and historians. It wants to show how individual and collective memories are contradictory built and slowly erased, revealing the work of time on remembrance. It wonders why actions and events are slowly forgotten so as to fall into oblivion and lose their meaning. It reveals how his-tory is written and wonders why her-story is not. It talks about a trade unionist mythology in the context of slow but ineluctable disappearance of an archa c hard-working industrial environment.
Aiming at re-building, piece by piece like a puzzle, a collective memory based on singular voices, with the support of images (pictures and tv archives), the film is travelling from the present to the past in a view to remember a long lasting women's strike which raised attention of all european media and gave hope and dignity to women workers all over Europe.