Women’s Camera

EN

“Women’s Camera begins with the elegant Ingrid Oppermann at the camera, standing on a tripod and swivelling the Arri BL 16 mm camera in the direction of the camera moving towards her. The white capital letters of the title Women’s Camera shoot one by one into the picture-filling lens with compendium, to the rhythm of rumbling rock riffs by the band Rumplestiltskin. A pan to the right shows the face of the camerawoman, whose left eye is closed. A clear and competent female voice asserts, describes and explains the events or remains silent as the film material is inserted into the cassette in the dark bag, towards which the camera moves until almost the entire image is black. Tamara Wyss can’t help but laugh when labelling the cassette, as she does when she finally looks into the camera. [...] 

The film was shown for a while to the following dffb classes. Hartmut Bitomsky wrote under the heading ‘The films, the production of wealth and the poor consumers’: ‘Women’s Camera is a film about the liberation of women, it is not about emancipation, it is its objectification. [...] [It] is a film about the camera craft that women have practised.’ At some point, the film disappeared into the archive of the dffb, which kept forgetting itself. With Women's Camera, the ‘Grundkurs-Frauen 1971’ succeeded in responding to the specific experience of social assumptions regarding the use of technology: ‘Women!!! and technology!!!’ Housework is also brought into play with a light hand in a confident, collaborative and self-empowering way: knitting, cooking and filming. Situated learning and teaching with material are intertwined here. The students (and the invisible lecturer) transform the shared learning experience into an active and enlightening teaching experience. What can be seen is the fun that practical intelligence and liberating passing on make.”

Madeleine Bernstorff1

Front Image: Courtesy of Deutsche Kinemathek

• 1Madeleine Bernstorff, “Feminismen an der dffb 1966-85,” Deutsche Kinemathek.