Fifty years ago when women film artists from the new revolutionary generation made films, it was all about dealing with topics from traditional female roles, self-determined sexuality to the professional equality of women and the development of a female filmic language. The goal was to institute a perspective into cinematographic work that moved away from the standard eroticized templates of male image production. So, today, how do films made by contemporary women film-makers present the female dimension? Which topics, issues and goals do women film artists focus on, in which aesthetic forms do they articulate their constructions of the female? All these are questions dealt with by a course at the Film University Babelsberg. A fruitful aesthetic discourse has
been established through continuous and in-depth examination of such questions. The Babelsberg Salon was created as an initiative to transfer in-depth discussion about film and the feminist analytical view on films from universities and academies out into the public domain. And so the Babelsberg Salon is now going on tour, and will be presented for the first time at the Women’s Film Festival in Dortmund to an interested public audience. The participants will start by dealing with films selected from this year’s Festival schedule and come up with proposals on how to look
at film, put these to the audience and invite debate.
– Susanne Foidl und Renata Helker
In cooperation with Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF
Renata Helker
Film scholar Renata Helker is a lecturer in Film Theory, Drama Aesthetics and Film Dramaturgy at DFFB, the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, the HFF Munich (Munich University of Television and Film) and UdK Berlin (Berlin University of Arts). In addition to essays, radio broadcasts and documentaries on film history and film acting, in 2005 she published the monograph The Chekhovs – Routes into the Modern and is currently working on a publication about actor Carl Raddatz.
Susanne Foidl
Susanne Foidl graduated as a master editor and since 2006 has been on the academic staff for the Editing course programme at the Babelsberg Film University KONRAD WOLF. Since 2013 she has been the Equal Opportunities Officer at the Film University. Her specialist fields are artistic editing and »editing gender«. Before, during and after graduating she worked as a freelance editor. At the moment, she is looking at film as a »world outlook machine« and film as »gender technology«, with editing as a constant focus.
