Watched: documentary about Le Droit Humain
One of the makers of Terra Masonica informed me about a documentary about Le Droit Humain. The title of the DVD and the website are in French, but I decided to order a copy. When I got it, I noticed that the information on the box is in French, Spanish and English and the documentary proves to be available in these languages as well. Only now I see that the website is available in all these languages as well.
A minor note about this English language though. It is English that often sounds as if a French(wo)man not mastering the language is reading from a piece of paper. There are quite some interviews in the documentary and the English speaker is put over the talking interviewee. It sounds a bit silly and perhaps subtitles would have been a better idea, but I appreciate the effort of making this documentary available to a larger audience. Doubly so because I expected a documentary in French.
The documentary feels a bit one-sided. It is presented as a documentary about Le Droit Humain, but in fact it is mostly about the French approach to Freemasonry. The subtitle of the documentary is: “humaniste, laïque et mixte”, or ‘humanistic, secular and mixed’. “Laïcité” is an often returning notion within French Freemasonry at large, but the largest spread of Le Droit Humain was when Annie Besant started to found ‘theistic’ (and Theosophical) lodges. Many federations of Le Droit Humain have lodges working in different Rites than “secular” ones.
That said, the documentaries has some history of Le Droit Humain either shown by actors that are put in classical drawings, the reading of texts of Marie Deraismes and Georges Martin and through interviews.
The documentary of about an hour is divided into chapters about the subjects in the subtitle, but also subjects such as Freemasonry during WWII (not specifically about LDH) and charity.
The people who are interviewed range from members to chairmen and -women of lodges and umbrella organisations. They tell personal stories about their initiations and thoughts about Freemasonry, but there are also some ‘bigger stories’.
A good choice is the mix of people. One is quite harsh towards men-only Freemasonry, another a feminist, the next anti-clerical; but there is also a Catholic woman who chose for a “secular” lodge and a feminist who preferred a mixed gender lodge over a female only one.
The interviewees and places where was filmed are from France, but also Southern America. You also get to see some temples, sometimes empty, sometimes with Masons in full dressing, sometimes even ‘in action’.
The documentary seems to try to give an idea of Freemasonry in general and (the secular branch of) Le Droit Humain in particular. This worked out fairly well. Outsiders get a fairly good idea of the subject. Freemasons (also members of other federations of Le Droit Humain) get an insight into ‘the French branch’.
The DVD costs € 20,- plus shipping and is available from “Femmes et Images“.