for urgent events), Carole and Paul Roussopoulos demonstrated a political and historical awareness of the value of the images and sounds they produced or accompanied in the making process — at a time when activists were fighting against the legal registration of audiovisual works.

While SCUM Manifesto, an emblem of radical feminism, has always circulated in activist and initiated circles, the video contin-ues to stir up controversy, echoing the acronym for SCUM: Socie-ty for Cutting Up Men. Some people say that they are shocked by the violence of the video, dismissing Valerie Solanas’s sharp, icy, yet poetical statements as being equivalent to the crimes and vio-lence effectively committed. Others, who are imbued or worried by the stereotypes attached to feminists (hysterical, ugly, frustrat-ed, man-haters), declare that the film is detrimental to the cause of women. Some reactions are visceral, as if the intentions of the text and of the performance went unnoticed by a section of the pub-lic; as if the scandal was located in literary or video creation, rath-er than in oppression or wars. Yet, while Valerie Solanas’s words should not be taken literally, they do deserve to be taken seriously. Through their video device, Les Insoumuses designate perpetrators and develop Cathy Bernheim’s intuition: “we keep returning to the scenes of your crimes, so that it is no longer possible for you to deny them”. 34 The fantastical violence of “a strange language that causes you ear pain” 35 is only a retort to forms of violence, which are for their part, very real. What is truly intolerable is “your crimes”, the directors insist: the violence, the rapes, men’s wars, not the cries of women experiencing them on a daily basis, not the words used to denounce them.