Women film

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As women's films on the one hand is a series of films , most of which are created in the 1970s and 1980s, and usually with a emancipatory use objective women as protagonists and make their specific views and problems to the fore.

Women’s film has been shaped by directors such as Margarethe von Trotta and Helma Sanders-Brahms since the mid-1970s . It is aimed primarily at a female audience.

On the other hand, women’s films also denote films that are designed in particular for female viewers or that particularly appeal to them. Films like Pretty Woman , magnolias made of steel or dirty dancing belong to this genre, which is called “ chick-flick ” in English .

Classification of film history

Until the 1960s, the image of women in film was often determined by male role clichés. The actresses served the one-dimensional expectations that were placed on their characters, for example in the mother role or as femme fatale . Films in which women were the focus were mainly melodramas that were determined by female sacrifice and renunciation.

In the course of the second women's movement , the filmmakers of women ’s films tried to break through this one-dimensionality and to put female self-confidence in the foreground while creating identity. They often dealt with women-specific topics, such as domestic violence or abortion , but also more universal topics such as war, politics or professional life from a specifically female perspective. A cultural environment with feminist film magazines and its own film festivals developed around women’s film .

Margarethe von Trotta

Margarethe von Trotta's collaboration on Volker Schlöndorff's Die Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (based on Heinrich Böll 's story of the same name ) in 1975, in which a young woman is destroyed by the tabloids and state violence, is seen as the starting point for women's films in the narrower sense . This was followed in 1978 under von Trotta's direction, The Second Awakening of Christa Klages , in which a kindergarten teacher becomes a bank robber to save her children's shop, and in 1979 Sisters or The Balance of Happiness over a sister conflict that ends in murder. Die Bleierne Zeit (1981) also addresses the story of two dissimilar sisters, in this case against the background of terrorism in Germany. Heller Wahn (1983) deals with the friendship between two women who emancipate themselves from their husbands and presents two icons of women’s film with its leading actresses Hanna Schygulla and Angela Winkler .

Other women filmmakers

With her films Nine Lives Has the Cat (1968), Erika's Passions (1976), A Woman with Responsibility (1978) and The Sleep of Reason (1984), Ula Stöckl contributed to the movement of women’s films . Helma Sanders-Brahms filmed Unterm Pflaster ist der Strand (1975), Shirin's Wedding (1975) and Germany, Pale Mother (1980). Other directors were Helke Sander with A Premium for Irene (1971) and The Beginning of All Horrors is Love (1980), Cristina Perincioli with For Women - Chapter 1 (1971), Jutta Brückner with Hunger Years (1979), Monika Treut with Die Jungfrauenmaschine (1988) and Doris Dörrie with A completely and utterly neglected girl (1977), Mitten ins Herz (1983) and Inside the Whale (1984).

The movement of women’s film, which is predominantly based in the Federal Republic of Germany, has been internationally received by representatives such as the Dutch Marleen Gorris Die Stille um Christine M. (1981) and The Bought Woman (1984) or the Swiss Isa Hesse-Rabinovitch .

The women's film in the GDR

In the GDR, women's film reached its peak in the early 1980s. After DEFA's early women's films, including The Third (1972), Die Legende von Paul und Paula (1973) and Sabine Wulff (1978), it was above all Konrad Wolf's solo Sunny (1980) in which “fronts and tough contradictions… become clear [were] that otherwise remain hidden ”. In the early 1980s, female directors increasingly appeared who showed female characters in their films who, emancipated, often struggled with social boundaries. Evelyn Schmidt's Affair (1979) and Das Fahrrad (1981) as well as Iris Gusner's Kaskade zurück (1984) are examples of films in which "the topic of self-discovery and emancipation of women in the society of real socialism is fairly straightforward". . They often led to heated discussions and criticism. The issue of equality of women addressed in the film also became a political issue, as women in the films "stood up against traditional thinking, against indifference and the withdrawal into the private sphere" and thus demonstrated the stagnation of the GDR system itself. From the official side, the gender equality problem was also considered solved.

Women's films from the late 1980s, including Herrmann Zschoche's Die Alinseglerin (1987), Erwin Stranka's Liane (1987) and Iris Gusner's I love you - April! April! (1988) tend to show reservations about the topic and digress into the private and general. Other DEFA women’s films include Dach überm Kopf (1980), Guarantee for a Year (1981), the film adaptation of the novel Franziska Linkerhand , Our Short Life (1981) and The Worry (1982).

literature

  • Werner Faulstich: film history. Fink, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-7705-4097-2 , p. 225ff. (Also published as UTB basics).
  • Gudrun Lukasz-Aden, Christel Strobel: The women's film. Films by and for women. Heyne, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-453-86090-X , ( Heyne-Bücher 32), ( Heyne-Filmbibliothek 90).
  • Gwendolyn Ann Foster: Women Film Directors. An International Bio-Critical Dictionary . Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 1995, ISBN 0-313-28972-7 .
  • Claudia Lenssen, Bettina Schoeller-Bouju (ed.): How did you do it? Recordings on women and films , Schüren, Marburg 2014.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Werner Faulstich: Film history . Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-7705-4097-2 , pp. 225ff.
  2. ↑ Die Weltbühne 1980, quoted in according to Klaus Wischnewski: dreamers and ordinary people 1966 to 1979 . In: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 260.
  3. ↑ a b Elke Schieber: Beginning of the end or continuity of suspicion 1980 to 1989 . In: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 267.
  4. ↑ Elke Schieber: Beginning of the End or Continuity of Suspicion 1980 to 1989 . In: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 268.