Was Femen, the vociferous, bare-chested Ukrainian feminist protest group that stands as a middle finger in the face of patriarchy, founded by a man? A man who just wanted to meet women, and who selected only the prettiest of the bunch for membership?
That is the claim in a new documentary about the group. Femen’s most visible face, Inna Shevchenko, says it’s not totally, 100 percent true. The footage says otherwise, and thus a controversy is born at the Venice Film Festival.
Director Kitty Green strolls down the red carpet with Femen activists at the Venice Film Festival. (Photo: EPA/Ettore Ferrari)
Shevchenko forcefully responded to the outcry in The Guardian on Thursday with a first-person account of Svyatski’s role: “Yes, Svyatski was part of the Femen movement. He is not a founder of Femen, nor a creator of our topless strategy and ideology. But he did lead the movement some time ago. This story is not so much about how the movement was born. It is rather the story of how the struggle began.”
In the film titled Ukraine is Not a Brothel, Victor Svyatski tells Australian director Kitty Green that he initially pulled Femen’s strings. The irony turns cynical when Svyatski tells Green that he started the group to “get girls” and uses words like “weak” and “bitches” to describe the women during the interview.
Victor Svyatski
That scenario seems a far cry from the Femen origin story Shevchenko gave Vocativ earlier this year on the genesis for the group’s nude protests.
Vocativ spent extensive time documenting Femen’s techniques from the group’s new headquarters in Paris, which their leader claims was established after the break from the man at the center of this week’s controversy. See our video below.
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