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To
many women, the attempt to understand and categorize their professional
work in terms of gender is a provocation. They find any such endeavour disparaging
and offensive. Often enough, the attempt merely stems from a male interest
in establishing male performance as the norm. This also applies to documentary
films. Which is why most female documentary filmmakers have good cause to
resist any attempt to stamp their works with the label "female film".
In addition to showcasing three European female documentary filmmakers (see below), we have selected "The Female View" as the theme for the entire festival. Our sense of the term being that the female view is a paradigm – correlated to the male view! We do this on the authority of fifteen years of screening and programming festival films, during which we have always paid special attention to films produced by women. This was the case even throughout the nineties, as female filmmakers fought an uphill battle against the Zeitgeist, historical circumstances, social discourse and production conditions. While always considering our programme an annual appraisal, we viewed documentary films as a seismograph of the state of all affairs concerning women; the state of the social structures, changes and perspectives, with and within which women were living, in the West and East, in the North and South. The most authentic portrayal of women's reality was always that created by women themselves. These films by no means dealt exclusively with women's identity and reality. The palette of topics and protagonists was rich and highly varied. Does it exist, this female view? What virtues could it have over the male view? How can we distinguish it from the male view? Or are we merely dealing with yet another cliché, akin to all the other predominantly chauvinistic clichés about the female sex which have been propagated for centuries? We are not interested in proving a point. Yet we find the question intriguing, and we invite you to explore this question in this year's festival programme. Traditionally the International Programme (Competition and "Point of View"), with its fifty to sixty 16 and 35mm films from over twenty countries, presents a broad spectrum of artistic documentary forms of expression and film language, of narrative strategies, of perspectives and vision. As many filmmakers as possible will present their own films. In addition to Western European documentary films, ample consideration will be given to works from North America. Some astonishing examples of Eastern European and Russian documentary filmmaking will be presented, despite the restricted means of production available in those countries. Because documentary film production in many Asian, African and Latin American countries is restricted almost exclusively to video, we have created this year a video section for films from those countries. Our perennially successful section "New Films From Bavaria" (film and video productions) includes 25 works by documentary filmmakers who live in Bavaria and deal with topics from around the world. Our emphasis is on variety, current relevance of topics, as well as on the spontaneity and indepedence of the various filmmakers. We are particularly interested in providing young filmmakers a forum for innovative, experimental forms and explosive topics. We have dedicated another section of the programme to films from the Balkans and those dealing with the Balkan wars during the nineties. We are also preparing a panel discussion on this topic with journalists, politicians and filmmakers. "The Female View" is the topic of the Retrospective. This series of films is dedicated to three outstanding European documentary filmmakers: Molly Dineen from Great Britain, Nurith Aviv, Israeli by birth but who has lived in Paris for many years, and Gisela Tuchtenhagen, who has worked as Klaus Wildenhahn's camerawoman for many years and has directed her own films for over a decade. All three directors will introduce their films and be available for audience discussions. |
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Festival Director: Guest- and Press-Service: |
