5 - Film Feminisms in West German Cinema: A Public Sphere for Feminist Politics

Summary

Arising from the events that we associate with 1968, the 1970s can be described as the decade of feminist filmmaking and film theory. A crucial aspect of this decade of feminist filmmaking was the development of a film feminist public sphere.In this essay, I examine how this public sphere emerged out of the broader radical changes that we associate with “1968.”I understand “public” as a social context wherein collective experiences can be reflected and compared and in which counter-publics articulate themselves and influence collective societal processes. Yet, “public” also refers to certain institutions and activities, as well as to conditions of social experience characterized by antagonisms. During the 1970s, a women’s film sphere gradually emerged as a result of the publication of new film magazines and books, as well as the screening of (mostly short) films directed by women at small film festivals, including some that would eventually become landmarks of women’s filmmaking. I am therefore also interested in the isolated moments when female filmmakers and their films were present in this public sphere, long before they constituted themselves as feminist. For audiences to encounter these international female filmmakers made a difference. In order for the public sphere’s gendered hierarchies to become less ossified and more flexible, many hegemonic interpretive frameworks had to be put into question and many persisting and small-scale powers had to work together.

This analysis cannot be carried out without considering the sociopolitical situation of the early Federal Republic of Germany. After a brief punitive phase, when the population was confronted with the crimes that had been committed during the Nazi era, the ideological realignment of West Germans after the Second World War, especially the re-education advised in the western zones, also became linked to the demand for cinematic self-expression. In the summer of 1947 the British military administration announced that “the reconstruction of the German Film industry rests essentially on psychological grounds. For if Germany is to develop a new sense of responsibility and purpose, it must develop its own means of self-expression. Its screens must be freely open to its own creative producers and directors.