Director of the Berlinale retrospective : Why should men be able to do it better?

Helke Misselwitz was Born in 1947, studied at the film school in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Her documentary film "Winter adé" is regarded as a most striking portrait of women in the late GDR. From 1997 to 2014 she was a Professor in Babelsberg. In the retrospective of her documentaries "Nude photography, for example, Gundula Schulze" and "Who's afraid of the black man running".

Ayşe Polat was Born in 1970, came up with eight as the daughter of Kurdish parents to Hamburg. Since students days she turns in the Short, feature and documentary films. Her Film "En Garde" (2004), which won a Silver leopard in Locarno, belongs to the Berlin school. In 2018, it led in the TV series "The attorney" directed by. In the retrospective to be shown in the short film "A celebration for Beyhan" (1994).

woman Misselwitz, Mrs Polat, the title of the retrospective, "self-determined" in their movies?

POLAT: My short film "A celebration for Beyhan" tells the story of a young German-Turkish woman that would like to cut the umbilical cord between your family and free. I have found an associative visual language. As a Director I get to my beginnings as a self-taught to always do with predetermined structures. Because the TV stations often shape what is produced.

MISSELWITZ: I would modify the word "self-determined". For me, it was important to say in the Structure, where I come from, I do. The GDR television had delegated me to study, but I wanted to make then in the youth Department and a pioneer magazine. I wanted to have a say in what I shoot in the future. At film school I've been busy with the history of women. In television, this was not possible, but in a different state film institution to get in, was difficult. I've done it with contributions for the Kinobox, a production group at the DEFA-documentary film Studio, a kind of catch basin.

Why is I-Say in women a sign of quality and, apparently, more important than men?

MISSELWITZ: men had to admit that. This is due to historical reasons. They had the Power.

POLAT: I wonder if the film project, a woman is more likely to, if you don't draw it out of your innermost, although you would be without distance to your subject even. Just in the documentary women show a lot of intimacy, in movies about anorexia, rape, or the female body. The remains in the memory, but I have the impression that this expectation is supported. The image that women feel different, is supported by the majority of male setter in our profession.

MISSELWITZ: I mean with I Say that I will decide what and how I tell my theme. The short movies, the Kinobox I could only assume, because I made them to my order. I wanted to overcome the distance, wanted to discover what I'm interested in it. In the case of my Film, "Tango dream" I wanted to know what the dance is, and to do his story with me. Where the dance comes from, what social conditions him to Argentina. I wanted to make the longing for another culture sensual comprehensible and the inability to describe, to experience something that was out of reach.

Helke Misselwitz.Photo: Andreas Klaer

you Were always the authors of their films?

MISSELWITZ: Sometimes I relied on research, but the concept I have designed for themselves. To had a date of death of Karl Marx, I placed the order for a short Film about the seven bad years of the family. I'm going by myself, I archive concerned material and a location found, a open demolition of the ruins. We have been working with an old mechanical Parvo L-camera, with which you could make during the rotation of wonderful Transitions. Just the Material in the camera, rewind it and on the same piece of Film new schedule, I wanted to give it a try. Such adventures were often associated with it.

POLAT: I write screenplays for my own films and hold on exactly how I imagine the images. But in the meantime, I also work as a contract Director. I own projects for years, with me slow, has its advantages and disadvantages, but the most fun.

MISSELWITZ: Write associatively?

POLAT: Create is for me, it's the flow and the focus of the story. In my Film "En Garde" there is a traumatized outcast in a home for young girls. There are moments in which your I lose, because soft I in the associative images of the linear story.

30 percent quota for female Directors this is the way to make the female perception of the world is visible?

POLAT: It is a question of Survival, because the conveyor system for the author of the film is very cumbersome. But the real scandal is that, so far, to little-educated women working in the German film business. Why should men be able to it better? The ratio is not important, because the structures to regulate itself.

MISSELWITZ: I think it's fair and overdue that women can exist in the profession as well as men. The other Problem is the conveyor system using a risk-free decisions. I wonder where they are, which I know you write strong scripts.

Ayse Polat.Photo: Imago

Mrs Polat, it is expected of you stories about your culture of origin?

POLAT: My roots are only a part of my identity. My films are reduced, and it makes me sad. When I learned that my short film "is A celebration for Beyhan" in the retrospective, I was very happy. When I saw that he was placed in front of a documentary of a German-Turkish woman, has me irritated. Because with the Label of "German-Turkish cinema," we had to fight for a long time, since it is the works of Mach on the origin of the film is reduced. It is a question of Aesthetics to Film, not only of a cultural sociological phenomena. I make films about universal stories and feelings.

MISSELWITZ you raise the issue in their introductions?

POLAT: We have said on the podium often, we don't want to be as a German-Turkish cinema labeled. We discussed it, but it remains.

identity is a concept with great potential for conflict. He is led from the right in the field to other sideline, but in artistic debates, recognisable identity is regarded as a quality feature.

POLAT: When concrete Placements are negotiated, I think the search for identity is plausible. Someone in Vienna told differently than someone from Hamburg. Home and belonging are important, but to me it is the Problem that an aesthetic approach agreed and all the socio-logical and political-the content of "read". Identity can be my theme, but the Film is an aesthetic Medium.

MISSELWITZ: I note that in retrospective, mostly. What if it shows Ayşe Polats "En Garde" and "home" by Angelika Andree and Petra Tschörtner together to see what happens when different creatures meet? There was in the two German film cultures aesthetic affinities? What are the social conditions were in? Is something traveled from the East to the West, and Vice versa? In comparison with the horizons, I would like that.

More about

retrospective on the Berlinale fighters from the East and the West

Madeleine Bernstorff

"Who's afraid of the black man", 16.2., 17.15 PM, "A celebration for Beyhan", 16.2., 13 o'clock (both Zeughauskino)