What does the term women's film mean to you?
Below is an excerpt from an interview with three German feminist filmmakers. entitled "Conversing Together Finally", this article was part of a special section on "Film and Feminism in Germany Today"which appeared in JUMP CUT No.27 (PO Box 865, Berkeley CA 94701 USA).
Bruckner: It points to a kind of film which proves that women are much more sensitive than even they themselves had imagined. My position is miles away from that. The notion as presently used is very harmful and I would suggest that we abandon it.
Reidemeister: We are stuck in such narrow categories. The concept "women's films"serves only to discriminate against all of us.
Perincioli: We've struggled so long to be able to make films about women's issues. Now we have done that for a while, and we women are becoming interested in issues such as nuclear power and the military. Helke Sander and I have found, however, that TV producers will not accept our script suggestions on these "male" themes. It will take a long time to overcome that prejudice.
Bruckner: The notion of "women's films" also serves to mainstream women's position as a "minority" when their films belong only to the alternative cinema, it becomes a convenient way to repress the fact that women constitute half of the world's population. Our problems are not minority problems.
Perincioli: I would keep the concept, "women's films. "Men's films are not just made by men but also situated in a completely different social framework and represent society as if we didn't exist.
Bruckner: Furthermore, the best "women's films" are generally considered to have been made ny men; much better than anything we women could ever make!
Marlies Graf, maker of 'Amour handicape' speaks, in a translated extract from the original French article 'Cinema feministe: le bilan 81' in Femmes Suisses, June 1981.
Ï don't want to draw a line between men and women directors. There is incompetence, superficiality and sensibility and honest approaches on both sides. However, I am sure that because of their experiences, what they have been through, women approach the cinema differently.
Marlies Graf list three basic points about woman's cinema:
- on the psychological level, the lower self-confidence of women which education and traditional sex roles tend to create in women. In a competitive labour market like the film world, this handicap can prove fatal.
- on the level of making films, women often take an unsual approach, are less in conformance with and less conformist about the artistic rules of the cinema. This lack of respect for cinematic convention creates new problems on the next level:
- on the institutional level, women's unconventional ways of approaching things are not acceptable to film commissions, which are mainly composed of men.