4th. International Women's Film Festival 1993

The subversive Power of Laughter

Introduction:

Gender Relationships and Female Humour - as Portrayed on Film
In 1993 the Dortmund FrauenFilmfestival was showcasing the many varied ways in which humour is conveyed in cultural and artistic products made by women. Particular emphasis will be on those film products that resort to subtle and subversive forms of wit, parody and satire in a wide-ranging mix of genre, format, medium, style and aesthetic expression.

It's high time that the theme of gender relations was tackled in an upfront and innovative way (though this is not to deny the benefits of the serious problematics approach). Over the last few years, more and more women filmmakers and audiovisual artists have been resorting to the perspectives of distance, irony, cock-snooting and savage wit in order to comment on gender roles. Their aim: to unmask the standard notions of "femininity", "new femininity" and "masculinity" as the social constructs that they are.

Caricatures with Camera and Computer
The central issue during this mediawatch was an inquiry into whether - and, if so, how - wit, burlesque and other forms of comedy are an effective means of subverting the discourse of (male) dominance and creating new methods of political intervention. The fact that laughter is an integral part of body language (you crease, shake or split your sides with laughter) has always been viewed as an articulation of the subversive, the anti-authoritarian and the nonregulated power of wit. According to Renate Jurzik (a German authoress who has written on the subject), "laughter exposes and speaks for the chaos lying just under the surface of all concepts of order".
Thus it is that caricature and jokes have always been a traditional means of political debate. Thoughts otherwise censored by society can be smuggled into animated films of the absurd. Crude imitation and ridicule are just two of the weapons in the armoury of the powerless defending themselves against social taboos and hierarchies. That this happens and how this happens in various places and with different media tools had been examined at the Festival and given over to discussion.

The Frauenfilmfestival: The Birthplace of a New Humour?
We are well aware that this is a complex and sophisticated issue. The organisers would have liked (????) the FrauenFilmFestival to reflect approaches to a female culture (or cultures) of humour. But we also wanted to take a small step towards extending film festival ritual by menus of carnival laughter and performances. In this way, we hope that the barriers and contradictions between mere entertainment and art can be dismantled.

We saw this Festival as a springboard for an investigation into the cultural and social specifics of wit and humour, as a chance for experimentation with anarchic fringe cabaret and as an opportunity - in conjunction with an analytic look at mass entertainment comedy (TV etc.) - to pose the question: Is the (uninhibited) laughter of women a provocation per se? Which areas and which themes are best suited to the ironic perspectives inherent in art production?

This combination of works from throughout Europe, the Americas, Australia, China and Japan will open up new angles not just on similarities and differences in the attitude taken by women working with film to contemporary gender relations but also on the cultural and social characteristics of wit and humour. These themes have been underpinned by introductions, discussions, seminars and workshops.



Linked themes the Festival had been addressing:

Caricaturing society - parody and political satire

The laughter of the sexes

Female (survival) experts in the art of living

Other types of laughter -- wit and humour in other cultures

Home stories: kinflicks

Limits and taboos

Cable spaghetti; media satire

Lesbian issues

Historical comedy films



Caricaturing society - parody and political satire
Although laughter - particularly in the form of racist and sexist jokes - often serves to legitimate existing power relations, resistance is usually not far away: carnivalist actions (known but rare in the women's movement), subversive ideas smuggled in via comedy and satirical proposals for different kinds of utopia.

Films:
N(R Vi Selv Skal Sige Det (Danish Dynamite)
DK 1992/ 24 min. 30 sek. / Annette Olsen

Frostschutzmittel
D 1989/ 2 min. / Bärbel Neubauer

Lennä Lempi (Fly, my Love)
SF 1989/ 2 min. / Marja Pensala

Quadratisch, Praktisch, Gut...
BRD 1987/ 3 min. 30 sek. / Barbara Marheineke

Melken und Saugen
D 1991/ 28 min. / ANITA

Sexa-Pill
D 1985/ 4 min. / Bettina Bayerl

In Praxi
DDR 1979/ 3 min. / Sieglinde Hammacher

Bio-Graphics
A 1992/ 4 min. / Nana Swiczinsky

Geige, Pferd und ein bisschen nervös
R 1991/ 27 min. / Irina Ewteejewa

Der ungläubige
UdSSR/ 1984/ 10 min. / Eva Barinova

Udel (Schicksal)
CSFR 1988/ 12 min. /Jaroslava Havettova

Body Beautiful
GB 1990/ 13 min. 10 sek. / Joanna Quinn

Möchte jemand einen Keks ?
D 1990/ 4 min. / s/w / Hanna Nordholt

Negative Man
BRD/USA 1985 / 3 min. / Cathy Joritz

Lotto Texas
USA 1992/ 0 min. 30 sek. / Cathy Joritz

Grabowski, Haus des Lebens
D 1990/ 20 min. / Mariola Brillowska

Peep Show
D 1993/ 3 min. / Bettina Bayerl



The laughter of the sexes
The films presented in this block unashamedly continue the battle of the sexes but in a totally revamped way: the roles of victim and victimiser are inverted, alienated and toyed with.

Films:
Du Hast Kein Herz
D 1991/ 16 min. / Rotraut Pape

Hauptstrasse 260
D 1991 / 8 min. / Marion Rasche

The Weatherhouse
GB 1991/ 10 min. / Joanna Woodward

Pickelporno
CH 1992/ 13 min. / Pipilotti Rist

Elsa
SF 1982 / 4 min. 30 sek. / Marja Pensala

Pa-Ma-Triarchat
NL 1982/ 0 min. 47 sek. / Yvonne Oerlemanns

Geliebte Mörderin
D 1991/ 5 min. / Eva-Maria Hammel

Olga-Die Heilung
A/CH 1991/ 13 min. / Zipora Fried

Bar Jeder Frau
CH 1991/ 6 min. / Katrin Barben

Die Grosse Liebe
D 1993/ 27 min. / Claudia Richarz

Atlantic Rhapsody
DK 1989 - 75 min. / Karin OttarsdottÌr

Die Stille um Christine M
NL 1982/ 82 min. / Marleen Gorris

Brennende Betten
BRD 1987/88/ 83 min. / Pia Frankenberg

Danzon
Mexico 1991/ 96 min. / Maria Novaro

Sugarblues
USA 1991/ 25 min. / Nadja Anliker

Im Kreise der Lieben
D 1991/ 79 min. / Hermine Huntgeburth

Knock Out
N 1989/ 5 min. 30 sek. / Ellen Lundby

Sirup
DK 1990/ 114 min. / Helle Ryslinge

Full of Grace
B 1987 / 8 min. / Nicole van Goethem

Barmherzige Schwestern
D 1992/ 93 min. / 93 min. / Annelie Runge

Emra Waheda la takfi
(One woman is not enough)

ET 1989/ 130 min. / Inas Deghedy

A Period Of Piece
I/F 1973

Liebe und Anarchie
B 1987 / 8 min. / Nicole van Goethem

Film o Niczym
PL 1993/ 8 min. / Iwona Siwek

house
olga


Female (survival) experts in the art of living
How do women manage to survive life with such wit and humour -- lives which occasionally take a tragic course? How do they align themselves within or outside existing stereotypes of "woman"?
This block examines everyday personal survival strategies.Laughter is at once a means of relief, compensation and liberation: one of the many ruses of the powerless.



Other types of laughter - wit and humor in other cultures
Laughter reveals disparity -- the differences between the sexes, between the powerful and the powerless, between generations, between societal systems. What might well be excellent material for a joke in a certain culture might equally well be cause for deep offence in another society -- or, at the very least, a breach of good taste. Jokes about religion, (still) considered here in Germany more or less acceptable, create uproar in the USA whereas Japanese humour probably leaves the Germans cold. Ironic points made in a Latin-American film are probably missed on other continents.

Films:
Jehu - SF 1991
10 min. 30 sek. / Auli Mantila

Freud flyttar Hemifran (Freud leaves the house)
S 1991/ 100 min. / Susanne Bier

Reci, Reci, Reci, (Words, Words, Words)
CSFR 1991/ 8 min. / Michaela Pavlatova

Beijing Ni Zao (Good Morning, Peking)
VR China 1990/ 110 min. / Zhang Nunaxin

Emraa Waheda la takfi
(One woman is not enough)

ET 1989/ 130 min. / Inas Deghedy



Home Stories: kinflicks
The nuclear family - the central vehicle of socialisation -has often been exposed to the full brunt of ironic attack. Against the background of that awful patterned wallpaper, the bric-ý-brac of childhood and the compulsive repetition of never-changing ritual, the "circle of loved ones" is unmasked as a vicious circle.

Films:
Freud flyttar Hemifran (Freud leaves thev house)
S 1991/ 100 min. / Susanne Bier

Oranges are not the only Fruit
GB 1989/ 160 min. / Beeban Kidron

Schoon Genoeg - Royal Flush
NL 1988/ 18 min. / Ellen Meske

Die Mitreisenden
BRD 1988/ 15 min. / s/w/ Hermine Huntgeburth

Billi
D 1990/ 11 min. / Priska Forter

Family Turns
GB 1988/ 9 min. / Gilian Lacey

Gloria
D 1992/ s/w/ 7 min. / Hanna Nordholt

Knock Out- To tette og en bade Hette
??????????????????

Sugar Blues
USA 1991/ 25 min. / Nadja Anliker



Limits and taboos
Style and content of the works in this block have drawn on the noir aspects of film comedy -- on black humour, on the grotesque, on the absurdity of life and death, on involuntary humour, on laughter that sticks in your throat.

Films:
Le Pont Rouge (Die rote Brücke)
B 1991/ 21 min. / Geneviéve Mersch

Headrome
D 1991/ 6 min. / Gabriela Gruber

Idole mio Black Holes/ Heavenly Bodies
D 1991/ 6 Min. 30 Sek. / Barbara Marheineke

pont


Cable Spaghetti - Media Satire
The media in the mirror of distortion: Edith Zimmerman (based on German TV's real-life Crimewatch presenter Eduard Zimmermann) hunting mysterious women criminals; an ironic look at the laborious work of a female sound technician; an experimental video version of James Bond.

Films:
Showdowm Mit Gemi
D 1992/ 7 min. / Ulrike Zimmermann

Le Televisiun (The Television)
???????????????

Ich
BRD 1988/ 15 min. /Bettina Flitner

Backstage
D 1991/ 43 min. / Claudia Heuermann u.a.

James Bonk In Matt Blackfinger
GB 1988/ 11 min. 39 sek. / Akiko Hada

Pump It Up!
A 1991/92/ 6 min. / Juliane Alton u.a.

Aktenzeichen XX - Ungelöst
D 1991/ 28 min. / Bettina Flitner

Das Nummerngirl
BRD 1989/ 1 min. / Claudia Richarz



Lesbian Film Program
The lesbian film program is composed of different videos dealing with the different living realities from European-, orth- and South American- or Asian points of view.

Besides that the first and up to now only film dealing with the life of Lesbians in the former USSR has had it's world premiére.

Films:
An die Freundinnen
D/Rußland/ 1993/ 64 min. / Natalja Sharandak

Spin Cycle
USA 1991/ 5 min. 30 sek. / Aarin Burch

Exposurecan 1990
8 min. / Michelle Mohabeer ??????

Sex and the Sandinistas
GB 1991/ 25 min. / Lucinda Broadbent

Kush
GB 1991/ 24 min. / Pratibha Parmar

Special Films: Lesbian Video-Cabinet



Historical Comedy Films
The greatest comedians - or so the film histories and film retrospectives would have us believe - were men. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy are all hailed as the stars of slapstick and comedy, as the masters of comic character and as outstanding individuals in themselves who were able to lend something unmistakable to any film they appeared in -- stamping the storyboard with their own inimitable style. But did you know that the early cinema in Europe and the USA also afforded its star actresses the chance to consult and co-script? Above all, the character parts available in film comedy meant that a whole array of non-gender-specific, anarchic women's roles were there for the taking by actresses of the calibre of Pola Negri, Ossi Oswalda, Asta Nielsen and Dorrit Weixler. And nor were they slow to give contours to these parts. Even when this fertile phase of the cinema history had come to an end, women were still "allowed" - in the talkie comedies of Hollywood directors Lubitsch, Hawks and Capra, for instance - to be that which they were denied in other genres: working women, independent, zany, talkative and rebellious (until, of course, they were married off at the happy end). They could behave badly or pursue a career without having to renounce the man of their dreams. They could take a lover, smash crockery, scream hysterically or - like Mae West - pass obscene remarks.
A series of historical movies and two workshops will be presenting actresses who garnished these comedies and the female roles in them with seditious wit, whose eccentricity drove their directors and producers to near despair and who turned that space in front of the camera into their very own stage and platform.

Films:
Engelein
D 1913/ s/w// 50 min. / Urban Gad

Das rosa Pantöffelchen
D 1913/ 26 min. / Franz Hofer

Ich möchte kein Mann sein
D 1918/ 45 min. / s/w/ Ernst Lubitsch