Frauen in Berlin

A film from East Berlin, 1981, with a curious history of preservation. Having created an open, intimate atmosphere while interviewing other international students in the halls of residence at her East German film school in Potsdam-Babelsberg for Oyoyo a year previously, Indian exchange student Chetna Vora now spoke to German native speakers, women in Berlin. Here too, remaining in their private realm was key to establishing a communicative setting in which unforced, unrehearsed, horizontal conversations could unfold. Kitchen chats mostly. A film in the form of a rough cut, sometimes with unedited sequences and long stretches of talking and listening, which – fortunately – preserves the traces of the associative and authentic. The women are from different milieus, from young to old. Real life as a woman in the GDR. Caretaking, having children and bringing them up, work, living, forming bonds, separating, loving. Rock ’n’ roll by the window. These revelations have survived because the film material was pilfered from university storage, projected on an improvised screen and filmed on VHS in turn, with the result now having been restored by the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF.