), Women and Film, NY, London, Holmes & Meier, 1988, pp. The atmosphere, like the state of minds of the characters, is sombre. She also pursued an acclaimed acting career, starring in films by well known German directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Volker Schlöndorff. The film is about two sisters emotionally and intellectually joined at the hip. The absence of her father meant that von Trotta shared a strong bond with her mother, a relationship which, as von Trotta explains, gave her a sensitivity for female friendships and solidarity, a theme that runs through most of her films. |  Both women have left Germany. Short biography of Margarethe von Trotta, Click here to search for Margarethe von Trotta DVDs, videos and books at. The encounter with Schlöndorff had consequences. Your Daughters Come Back to You: The 28th Pan African Film and Arts Festival. Things have changed since, she feels: "I believe that nowadays we don't have to fear that women are being underrated. Most lately, Barbara Sukowa played the main role opposite Katja Riemann in von Trotta's latest and highly personal film, "The Misplaced World" (2015). She began her career in cinema as an actress in the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff, and shortly thereafter began co-scripting works with Schlöndorff, whom she married in 1971. We use cookies to improve our service for you. Over the last 40 years, Margarethe von Trotta has received nearly 30 awards - proof of her endurance and dedication to her own will. Afterwards, she starred in several films by von Trotta, including her award-winning performance in "Marianne and Juliane" (photo). His name and legacy continue to define Europe's largest circus — which is finding innovative ways to survive a pandemic. Together they shot "A Free Woman" (1972), one of Germany's first feminist films. Contact On the contrary, the film points to an individualistic ending, where Juliane withdraws herself from the collective team-work of the magazine and continues her work on an individual level by explaining to Jan, Marianne’s son, the reasons for his mother’s actions, an exchange between the generations which was denied to Juliane’s own generation. In 2016, only 20 per cent of film directors were women - and that in spite of the fact that nearly half of all students at film academies are women. Subscribe to Senses of Cinema to receive news of our latest cinema journal.Enter your email address below: Born in Berlin in 1942, Margarethe von Trotta is two things: the most important woman director to emerge from the New German Cinema, and narrative cinema’s foremost feminist filmmaker. The study, however, could not explain why some female directors manage to be so successful. (19.02.2017), Director Margarethe von Trotta's new film examines the confrontation between German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt and the Nazi Adolf Eichmann during his trial in Jerusalem. The latter is a story about a young woman who has a casual affair with a man she’s just met – a man she later discovers is a terrorist. After finishing school, she visited Paris at the age of 18 - a trip that changed her life. (9) It is not by chance that she names Bergman, Hitchcock and the French directors of the ’60s as the most important, lasting influences on her work. However, she claims the selection of those characters wasn't planned: "Originally, Fassbinder was to direct 'Rosa Luxemburg.' She is often regarded more highly abroad than in her home country – a fate she shares with those other German master auteurs Wenders, Herzog, Fassbinder and Schlöndorff. Having lived and worked in Italy for six years (during which time she produced several Italian films including 1993’s Il Lungo Silenzio), von Trotta returned to Germany to make the first love story which has spanned the years that the city of Berlin was divided. Official Sites. Sisterhood – literal or figurative – was once again von Trotta’s subject in Sheer Madness (Heller Wahn, 1982), her powerful follow-up to the much-acclaimed sibling studies of Sisters, or the Balance of Happiness and Marianne and Juliane. 61-68; also in Janet Todd (ed. In 1971, von Trotta divorced her first husband Juergen Moeller (with whom she had a child) and married Schlöndorff. Based primarily on Luxemburg’s letters and speeches, von Trotta’s portrait of this fascinating figure strikes an intriguing balance between the political and the personal, between Luxemburg’s life as a public revolutionary and her private experience as a woman. Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1995. Yet such recognition from German critics has not always been a forgone conclusion in von Trotta’s career. Margarethe von Trotta was born in Berlin in 1942. At the same time, she worked at a theater and from 1967 onwards began working in film. If you want to take pictures with your smartphone and quickly share beautiful results, you need effective image editing tools. "Sheer Madness" (1983) was about an intensive friendship between women which enabled the protagonist to protest against her unhappy marriage. "Some critics were obviously scared by this friendship between women," von Trotta said in an interview in 2012. (1). In her 2018 documentary on Bergman, Von Trotta describes how it was seeing The Seventh Seal for the first time while in Paris in 1960 s that made her interested in becoming a filmmaker. (7) Von Trotta’s interest lies in the emotions of the films’ characters and she seeks to portray German reality by means of her protagonists. Margarethe von Trotta, Director: Hannah Arendt. She co-scripted (and narrated) Schlöndorff’s The Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach (1971), turned in a precise, riveting performance in the lead role of Coup de Grace (1974) and co-directed The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, 1975). (4). DW Digital tests the most popular apps. "There wasn't enough confidence in women at the time," Margarethe von Trotta later said. She began her career in 1975. ", "Of course, that made me keen on making films myself. And Margarethe von Trotta was no exception to this trajectory, initially. Like Germany in Autumn (Fassbinder, 1977), Marianne and Juliane mixes the country’s past with its present, implying that the oppressive atmosphere in post-war Germany is responsible for the political activism of the student revolt. ava, Other Works 258-70, Julia Knight, Women and the New German Cinema, London, NY, Verso, 1992, Barbara Kosta, Recasting Autobiography: Women’s Counterfictions in Contemporary German Literature and Film, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1994, Klaus Phillips (ed. Barbara Sukowa (who also acted in Marianne and Juliane) shared Best Actress honours at Cannes in 1986 for her passionate portrayal of the eponymous title character. Ben Andac. In 1986, she created a film adaptation of Rosa Luxemburg's life story: "This woman was permanently attacked too," she said to explain her choice. She spent a lot of time watching movies together with her French friends: "These films opened my eyes to what a film could be like," she once said in an interview with the "Süddeutsche Zeitung. In 1981 von Trotta gained international acclaim with Marianne and Juliane, also known as The German Sisters (Die bleierne Zeit), her calling card to the world and arguably her masterpiece, as well as being the first film directed by a woman to win the Golden Lion at Venice since Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938). "The writer from a country without bookshops" is a portrait of exiled poet Juan Tomas Avila Laurel, highlighting the long, brutal rule over his homeland, Equatorial Guinea. The first female filmmaker to achieve international acclaim, Margarethe von Trotta is referred to as a "leading force" of the New German Cinema movement. Essay on The Promise plus an interview with Margarethe von Trotta, Xrefer Criminals Against Decoration: Modernism as a Heist, Claustrophobia and Intimacy in Alex Ross Perry’s, Thresholds of Work and Non-Work in Tulapop Saenjaroen’s, “If Ecuador is the name of an imaginary line….”: The 8, The 34th Cinema Ritrovato Has Full Resuscitation under COVID, Women at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, A Vitalising Cinema in an Agitated Age: The 58th New York Film Festival, Your Daughters Come Back to You: The 28th Pan African Film and Arts Festival, Stairways to Paradise: Youssef Chahine and, Waiting for Rain: Oppression and Resistance in Youssef Chahine’s, Cinema and the Female Star – A Symposium Part 3. Margarethe von Trotta was born in Berlin, Germany on February 21, 1942. 1969) ( divorced) ( 1 child). They are pictured here meeting at the Berlinale in 2014. |  Recent. | Mobile version. The sisters and their recently widowed mother nearly always wear black, a colour in ready contrast to the well lit sets, and the deft delineation of female cross-identification has drawn favourable comparisons to Bergman’s Persona (1966). Her favorite actresses, like Barbara Sukowa or Hanna Schygulla (left on picture, with von Trotta) were women with strong personalities. She met Jürgen Moeller, an editor in a publishing house; they married in 1964. Gender and German Cinema: Feminist Interventions. Often a doppelganger motif is at play, with one character, apparently normal and secure, linked with and set against a dark other – an erratic, second-self `sister’ who engages in transgressive or disturbed behaviour and who acts as a mirror for the more stable, integrated female character. The first, Sisters, or the Balance of Happiness (Schwestern oder die Balance des Glücks, 1979), is perhaps the most personal of all her films. Together with him, she stood in front of the camera in the film adaptation of Berthold Brecht's "Baal" directed by Volker Schlöndorff. Bold claims indeed – but irrefutable ones in my opinion, for there is no other director, male or female, who has matched von Trotta’s single-minded determination to show cinema audiences real female characters. We asked what unity means to you. As she turns 75, here are the highlights of her career. Together with Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta co-directed her first film, "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum," in 1975. (2) After attaining her high school certificate, von Trotta went to Paris, where she discovered the medium of film, and decided she wanted to become a filmmaker. As with most of her films, von Trotta combines emotional dimensions with current political affairs. To quote Elsaesser: The impossible quest for female identity, both barred by and founded upon the emotional interdependence of two women…her heroines are always political creatures.