Curator Focus
»The very expression of anger in a context of everyday life is liberating for women.« – Martha Rosler
A perpetual state of crisis is a genuinely fear-inducing prospect. Why don’t we rage against it? Rage & Horror, the theme of this year’s Focus, is an invitation to think about a more constructive approach to rage. It shows films made between 1899 and the present day that are a platform for angry female visions, whether they are monstrous or heroic or a chaotic combination of both. Brutal, supernaturally powerful, activistic, comic, uninhibited, supportive. We shine a light on women who express their anger without restraint.
Expressing anger is a bold and threatening act of defiance and rebellion. Anger is loaded with information and energy, said Audre Lorde in her 1981 speech entitled »The Uses of Anger«. Her fear of anger taught her nothing, she claimed. On the contrary, anger was her response to racism. By recognising their anger, women can detect discrimination and develop strategies to defend themselves against it. And so we search for enraged women in film history from 1899 until the present day – ignoring the constraints of genre boundaries.
Curator Focus
Studied theatre, film and television as well as Romance and German literature (gaining an MA) at the Ruhr University Bochum, the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Glasgow. Since 1996, she has worked as a freelance film curator. She devises programmes, workshops, talks and ideas for various festivals and symposia in film and theatre, since 1996 mainly for femme totale / Internationales Frauen Film Fest Dortmund+Köln.
She works in film and theatre as dramaturge, researcher, production manager and organiser. She hosts events, does press relations work, manages projects for the Nacht der Jugenkultur (youth culture event in North Rhine-Westphalia), and publishes work on radio and in print media. She also sits on international jury panels, including in Tel Aviv, Yerivan, Innsbruck, Prishtina, Seoul, Bozen, Taipei, Lessinia. As a regular member of the Transnationales Ensemble labsa in Dortmund, she has spent recent years looking more closely at the issue of attributions of identity. She has completed collaborative film projects and workshops, including I speak so you don’t speak for me. In 2018, she curated the film programme About Germany in order to reflect on how certain forms of exclusion and racism have built up in the realms of politics and media. This also includes looking into the past in order to frame the phenomenon of migration historically. In this context, a new perspective of East-West German history also emerged. Selected current programmes: Kultur@Gefängnis since 2015 in Germany’s Ruhr region | About Germany (IFFF 2018) | Wahnsinn. Widerstand.Wut – Ein fiebrig-feministisches Filmprogramm in drei Akten (Schillertage Mannheim2019 film festival) | In This Together (Women Make Waves Film Festival, Taipei)
»My desire and purpose is to engage with others in thinking about ourselves in the world and to find ways of talking about that, always keeping the debate new and fresh: This is an inspiring struggle which is not possible everywhere. IFFF Dortmund+Köln has always been – and still is – a setting that is open to committed voices, alliances and positions that don’t just follow the standard. That’s a strength that we want to maintain and not something we take for granted.«
Previous Focus topics have included:
THE CONNECTION: Between Plants, Humans and other Animals (2021)
After Reunification 1990 | 2020 (2020)
Image Traps (2019)
In Control (2017)
Comfort (2015)
Excess (2013)
NOW WHAT – Films about Getting out of Here (2011)
Freedom (2009)
Music (2007)
Money (2005)
Kiss-proof: who’s kissing who, when and why? (2001)
Uncanny Pleasure (1997)
The Subversive Power of Laughter (1993)
The Female Machine Saboteurs (1991)
A practical self-defence course against zombies and slashers, in which the boundary between screen and audience is blurred. Out-of-control monsters […]