Les Prostituées De Lyon Parlent

While most of the film world was out celebrating the relaunch of the Star Wars franchise, last Thursday saw another very different first, with the UK premiere of a subtitled version of the French Les Prostituées De Lyon Parlent.

The film, a documentary by Carole Roussopoulos, is an early exemplar of the fly-on-the-wall genre.

It documents events of summer 1975, after some 150 prostitute women occupied the church of St Nizier, one of the main churches in the centre of Lyon, France. They were protesting the brutal torture and murder of sex workers – and the inaction of police, who instead of going after the perpetrators of these crimes, preferred to fine and imprison the women who reported them.

Grainy, black-and-white and with little journalistic shaping, it provides voice to prostitutes with a range of different views, speaking about the issues that affect them. Shocking, for those with little awareness of these issues, is how little they appear to have changed in the years since 1975.

The women speak of how the state profits massively from their work, while refusing to acknowledge their rights. They talk of police abuse: of how they are unable to maintain ordinary relationships with partners or children, because the laws are loaded against them; and they talk of the impossibility of returning to normal life, once a woman has entered prostitution, because the roads back are blocked by the same institutions that condemn them.

There is little here of prostitution as desirable way of life: rather, it is viewed as economic necessity brought on by a system that hypocritically undervalues and oppresses women – and then condemns them for the choices they make.

The screening, by the English Collective of Prostitutes, marked a number of events: 2015 was the 40th anniversary of the occupation, while Thursday was the International Day to end violence against sex workers.

Those participating in the event (and the documentary) may not have known it, but this occupation was in its own way a historic turning point. The occupation in Lyon was followed by occupations of churches throughout France and the creation of the French Prostitutes Collective. It inspired the establishment, also in 1975, of the English Collective of Prostitutes.

The debate about sex work has since become highly polarised, but for those interested in the issue, this film is worth seeing. While it is clearly supportive of the occupation, it avoids wider political analysis; it is, finally, about women speaking about their lives.

Carole Roussopoulos, who died in 2009, was a Swiss film director and feminist best known for her pioneering early documentary films of the Women's liberation movement in France. In 1976 she co-directed, alongside French actress Delphine Seyrig, SCUM Manifesto, a documentary on women's rights written by the radical feminist Valerie Solanas.

Les Prostituées De Lyon Parlent is distributed by the Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir.