MÄDCHEN IN UNIFORM
Germany 1931. Dir: Leontine Sagan.
Cast: Hertha Thiele, Gertrud de Lalsky, Dorothea Wieck: 91 mins. 35 mm
Germany 1931. Dir: Leontine Sagan.
Cast: Hertha Thiele, Gertrud de Lalsky, Dorothea Wieck: 91 mins. 35 mm
Manuela, a teenage orphan, experiences an education in a convent for older daughters in Potsdam that is characterized by Prussian drill and a lack of human closeness. The only ray of hope for her is the loving teacher Fräulein von Bernburg, who opposes the matron’s rigid educational ideal. But when Manuela confesses her love to the woman who is only a few years older, a scandal ensues. This classic of early German sound film, and revered as a lesbian cult film, features an all-female cast and two women in key roles behind the camera: Christa Winsloe wrote the screenplay and Leontine Sagan directed.
After the screening, film scholars Karola Gramann and Heide Schlüpmann will talk about the history of the film’s reception – at the time of its making, it was mainly received as a film against Prussian educational methods and as a coming-of-age film; later, it became a lesbian cult film – the film’s personal significance for them, and about a wonderful interview they conducted with lead actress Hertha Thiele in the early 1980s.
With WEIMAR WEIBLICH. Women and Gender Diversity in Weimar Cinema (1918-1933), the DFF presents an exhibition on women in front of and behind the camera in Weimar cinema through November 12. During Pride Month in June, the accompanying program at the DFF cinema is dedicated to films that advocate physical and sexual self-determination.
