Four women behind the camera: film-makers Barbara Metselaar Berthold and Tina Bara accompany the photographers Evelyn Richter (born 1930) and Ursula Arnold (1929-2012) during their everyday lives: on walks, with family, taking photographs. The conversations that emerge are lessons in chronicling German history. The evocative black and-white photographs of Arnold and Richter tell stories of real life in Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin, in a subtle rather than a bombastic style: »Musikviertel, Leipzig« (1976), »Leipzig, Brandvorwerk Straße« (1956), »Rudolf Hausner, Altes Museum, Berlin« (1979) these titles are purely descriptive, the photographs themselves are observations, documentations. As part of a generation of female photographers who did not conform, neither before nor after 1989, Richter and Arnold now represent pioneers for a younger generation that, confronted with the amnesia of German history on the one hand and the pressure of a market-oriented ideology on the other, is looking for openings to find new »strategies of self-assertion«.
In the time since the film was made, a lot has changed in German politics. A new awareness exists of the consequences and mistakes made following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and this awareness is also trying to articulate itself on an artistic level. In showing Audienzen – Strategien der Selbstbehauptung, IFFF Dortmund+Köln  wants to highlight this development. (MZ)

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