작은 풀에도 이름 있으니 (Jak-eun Pul-eh-do I-reum Is-sseu-ni / Even Little Grass Has Its Own Name) | Wir haben lange geschwiegen

작은 풀에도 이름 있으니 (Jak-eun Pul-eh-do I-reum Is-sseu-ni / Even Little Grass Has Its Own Name)

D: Parituh collective / Kim Soyoung, South Korea 1990, 38 min, Korean OV with English subtitles

The Parituh collective’s name is a portmanteau, combining a reference to Bari, the protagonist of the Korean shamanist myth Baridegi – a princess abandoned by her parents owing to her sex and who eventually becomes a deity – with the word tuh, meaning “place.” Active between 1989 and 1992, during a period of democratization and working-class activism, the group abided by the motto “Let us solve women’s issues through the film screen.” Jak-eun Pul-eh-do I-reum Is-sseu-ni is a diptych about gender discrimation at work: its first segment depicts the double day of married women employees, while the second shows the progressive potential of unionization. Byun Young-joo, who would go on to direct 낮은 목소리 (Najeun moksori / The Murmuring, 1995), served as cinematographer.

Wir haben lange geschwiegen (We Have Long Been Silent)

D: Frauenfilmgruppe München (Sylvia Edwinsson, Monika Ergert, Gisela Novka, Monika Neuser, Ilona Balthazar und Christine Hett), Federal Republic of Germany 1974, 87 min, German OV with English subtitles

Made by a group of students at the Hochschule fur Fernsehen und Film in Munich, Wir haben lange geschwiegen alternates between fictional scenes depicting what Frauenfilmgruppe München member Sylvia Edwinsson describes as “typical situations in which women find themselves over and over again” and documentary sequences in which a consciousness-raising group responds to these scenarios. As member Gisela Novka put it in 1975, “The opportunity to offer possibilities of identification, to present problems that are perceived to be ‘individual’ as ‘collective,’ and at the same time the possibility of making the work of groups in the women’s movement legible as concerning all women, using particular examples that narrate what women think and feel about women and also documenting these processes: the medium of film offered all of this.”