Films and talks

Deutsche Bilder - Mädchen mit Zwanzig

Philipp Blum, Britta Hartmann, Kay Hoffmann, Nathalie Karl, Eva Knopf, Götz Lachwitz, Cornelia Lund, Werner Ružička, Inga Selck, Ursula von Keitz and Thomas Weber

Thu, May 29, 2014
8.30 pm
Admission: single ticket: 8€/6€, day ticket: 18€/16€

With simultaneous translation German and English

Volker Koepp, Mädchen aus Wittstock, 1975, Photo © DEFA-Stiftung, Michael Zausch

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft project “The History of Documentary Cinema in Germany 1945–2005” aims to write the history of documentary cinema in Germany before, during, and after the division of the country into East and West.

For Berlin Documentary Forum 3, members of the research project present, together with Duisburger Filmwoche director Werner Ružička, two film programs provocatively titled German Images. These images stem from the group’s research into the technical and institutional conditions of documentary, as well as its discourses, practices, modes, and major themes. The title designates the source of funding for the films while speculating: are the documentaries marked by national specificity, and if so, how might it be characterized? Mädchen mit Zwanzig (Girls at Twenty), a program of six films produced between 1960–87, looks at changing conceptions of femininity in this period through two generations of young women from East and West Germany. The second program, Turbine, explores the relationship between industrial production and social organization, once again between the two Germanys. Four films made between 1949–64 set the heroic labor and mandated optimism stemming from a modern belief in progress against the reality of dying villages and an increasing disassociation between rural and urban contexts of life. Films from the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica will also be screened. Founded in Göttingen in 1952, this ethnographic archive used film as a medium to document the entire moving world.


Mädchen mit Zwanzig:
Gesicht von der Stange Raimond Ruehl (FRG 1960/61), 35mm, 12 min
Angelika Urban, Verkäuferin, verlobt Helma Sanders-Brahms (FRG 1970), 35mm, 31 min
Stars Jürgen Böttcher (GDR 1963), 35mm, 18 min
Miss-Wahl Heinz Brinkmann (GDR 1987), 35mm, 13 min
Mädchen in Wittstock Volker Koepp (GDR 1975), 35mm, 20 min
Mädchen mit Zwanzig / Jahrgang 1942 – weiblich Hans Loeper (FRG 1962), 35mm, 10 min

Encyclopaedia Cinematographica:
Macaca fuscata (Cercopithecidae) - Tree-top Signaling Clarence Ray Carpenter (Japan 1971), Archive No. E 1469, 4 min
Masakin (Ostafrika, Kordofan) Beibringen von Ziernarben H . Luz & W. Herz (Sudan, 1964), Archive No. E 700, 21 min