Baby I Will Make You Sweat
Birgit Hein
Baby I Will Make You Sweat is a film by the then 50-year-old artist, who lives out her sexual desires during a spontaneous holiday in Jamaica and then undertakes further trips to Jamaica. The result is erotic, almost dreamlike sequences: Close-ups of black men’s bodies, island landscapes and emotional-metaphorical images that are formally edited, slowed down, rhythmically cut and combined with Hein’s voice-over reading from her intimate diary entries, externalising complex power relations. In terms of film history, Baby I Will Make You Sweat marks a turning point that branched off from the formal aesthetic, patriarchal experimental film of the BDR and led into the unprotected space of a new film aesthetic with a radical subjectivity and phenomenological physicality.
This film is subjective and sensual, but cannot escape its violent, political embedding. This makes it an uncomfortable, highly ambivalent work that has triggered heated discussions since its premiere at the 1995 Berlinale. However, the film is also an opportunity to reflect on intersectional forms of discrimination in relation to intimacy.
Birgit Hein
Birgit Hein is one of Germany’s most important experimental film-makers. Along with Wilhelm Hein, she produced pioneering experimental films, performances and installations from 1966 to 1988. In 1968, she co-founded the experimental film series X-SCREEN in Cologne, enabling international experimental films to be shown in Germany. In 1971 she published Film im Underground. Hein curated one of the first film history exhibitions, Film als Film. 1910 bis heute (Kölnischer Kunstverein 1977). Her expertise in the history of avant-garde film was unrivalled at the time. She also made a major contribution to building networks in the structural film scene between the US, England, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. From 1990 to 2008, Hein was Professor of Film and Video at Braunschweig University of Art (HBK). She began making her own films in 1991. She was also a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin (Academy of Arts in Berlin) and deputy director of its Visual Arts Section.
Films by Birgit Hein (Selection)
Abstrakter Film 2013 | Kriegsbilder 2006 | La Moderna Poesia 2000 | Eintagsfliegen 1997 | Baby, I Will Make You Sweat 1994 | Die Unheimlichen Frauen 1991 | Die Kali-Filme 1987 | Verbotene Bilder 1986 | Love Stinks 1982 | Strukturelle Studien 1974 | 625 1969 | Rohfilm 1968
