Thérèse Clerc

Thérèse Clerc is one of the great figures of militantism. From the struggle to legalize abortion to the fight for equal rights of men and women and the battle for gay rights, she’s been on the front lines of all of them. She has just learned that she has an incurable disease and has decided to take a last look back over her life, a tender and lucid look at the battles and the love that went with them.

Several elderly homosexual men and women speak frankly about their pioneering lives, their fearless decision to live openly in France at a time when society rejected them.

Lady Wankers is directed by French photographer Frédérique Barraja whose controversial 2010 photographic collection, Les Branleuses, inspired the documentary and is featured throughout. Barraja says she was so surprised by the conversations she had with the models for Les Branleuses during the shoot, about things that she could not show in photographs, that she decided to extend the subject into a film. “The idea was to do research about why we have all these sex toys, and we talk about sex a lot but we don’t talk about masturbating. It’s about self-discovery," said Barraja. A whimsical, slightly risqué but also serious exploration of the taboo subject of female masturbation. See interviews from women of all ages about their own personal stories and practices. It also looks at the history of female sexuality, along with the marketing of the vibrator to women in the 20th century, as well as the tragic issue of genital mutilation and its disastrous consequences.