THE ALL-ROUND REDUCED PERSONALITY - REDUPERS
- A film about a photographer in West Berlin initially structured in simple, clear movements that cut through the fluff. The photographer, Etta, is played by the filmmaker herself, Helke Sander.
- Movement 1: long, steady, unbroken tracking shots that glide through the streets of the city. The Berlin Wall, graffiti on the wall, military infrastructure, advertising billboards, shop displays, a man kicking a football down an alley past a chain link fence.
Briefly, in a window the reflection of a VW van with the side door open and the camera crew just visible, a great image of a romantic (but not ridiculous?) idea of this time and place (60s/70s West Germany) as a moment when art production was liberated, critical and experimental - as portrayed in DIE ZWEITE HEIMAT (1992). Although that series was also deeply critical, Sander's film goes even further in undercutting this idea whilst also presenting moments like this, producing an ambiguity like everyday life.
- A film about the city and a photographer working there - the film sets out her life and its material / economic aspects in detail, for instance a breakdown of (squeezed) living costs, and scenes of her working in a darkroom or waiting in cold weather for a shot she might be able to sell to the press. Equally integrated into the montage are images of the city she sees, in the tracking shots and also in the direct inclusion of the (staggering) photographs she takes, scenes that surround their creation. In the soundtrack, through a voice-over, we learn her ideas about photography, "the passion for things that are none of your business", or an interest in "the fate of a leather ball". "One should be able to choose what is none of one's business".
- When photographs are integrated into the montage the transitions from stillness to motion are near seamless - the film stocks appear as identical. The black and white suddenly becomes fluid and you get a sense of the photographer's art, picking a moment in this liquid motion, also knowing that colour is not possible. Images of the city in motion, a passing train or people dancing at a big conference. A relation with Hanne Darboven's film DER MOND IST AUFGEGANGEN (1981), which has a similar fluid-image effect, that film is like seeing through the eyes of a photographer walking around a city but without seeing any of the photographs they might have taken. In Sander's film, Etta gets too interested in the newspaper assignments she has to do for money. The effect of seeing these uncut photograph-moments doesn't produce a conclusion that the moment of the photograph is the best one; instead you see what is lost each time, people's voices for instance.
- Movement 2: scenes from everyday life presented in a minimal number of shots, usually with a fixed camera. We learn more about Etta's everyday life, where she lives, that she has a child. In some ways these scenes become a response to BLOW-UP (1966), presenting the life of a working photographer who isn't a huge success driving around the city in a Rolls Royce. The parallels between the two films are particularly clear in the scenes where Etta develops film in a darkroom or makes prints in her flat, which have a similar hypnotic effect.
- Anyway this film works with a combination of different elements, it contains fictional aspects and has a narrative but is clearly based on actual events, and the production is based entirely in real locations and appears to feature many non-actors (one of the most striking scenes sees Etta photographing a real demonstration of 6000 women marching through Berlin). Lots of films use these techniques but this one feels different, because it also acknowledges, and functions as a commentary on, the play of images in the world, and looks squarely at the power relations, down to a minute level, that underpin this. The montage of the film is itself this commentary.
- A moving picture full of other pictures, like CONVERSATIONS IN VERMONT (1969), in which Robert Frank films prints and contact sheets of his photographs being moved around, or indeed related work like the photographs of Walker Evans. He is always taking pictures of pictures. Here there is a shot of a politician making a speech in front of a huge drawing of Berlin. What is the motive for this commentary on images in Sander's film?
- The answer might come in the narrative, which begins to follow a seemingly real, though it's not clear, group of women photographers (including the protagonist) who want to use photography to show how they see the city, which is generally critical and involves photographing what the authorities would rather hide, and then feature their work on billboards like advertisers can. They also have a concept that the Wall is actually porous in some ways, for instance to gases, germs, refuse (which is taken to landfill in the East), broadcasts (Etta listens to GDR radio), and especially gazes (some streets shown are divided by the Wall to the point where you are looking into the GDR by looking at the apartment building opposite).
- So far the structure has been alternating between the tracking shots through the city (later featuring buildings among huge voids of space), and the minimalistic scenes of everyday life (for instance a small, simple scene of Etta and her boyfriend reading magazines and eating an orange).
Once this double structure has been established, it begins to be subverted as the characters carry out their art project, which is based on a subversion of public space and market time. The tracking shots of the city now grow to include the characters from the other scenes, carrying all their tools. They mount a huge print of one of their photographs so it can be carried around and installed in different parts of the city. There's an astonishing sequence that begins with one of Etta's photographs, then cuts seamlessly to a moving image shot of the exact same composition, which is slowly entered by two of the characters carrying a big print of the same photograph into the frame; all the levels of the film collide.
They also build a platform up to the top of the Wall with a curtain that fills the frame and is drawn back to reveal the streets of East Berlin. The characters refuse to ignore the Wall, and so does the film. Within this installation sequence there are also more details of everyday life, more eating orange, an argument about having children around, being exhausted at the end of the day, and a note in the voice-over that a male friend makes fun of their project. A multitude of differing points of view throughout.
- Then the excitement is over and the film returns to everyday life. The shots in this film are expertly exposed like photographs, there's a scene in a karate class where the whole frame is just a series of moving angles in variations of light grey, or an apartment at night completely black but for one white light bulb. There's a great quote Edda recites in the voice-over from Christa Wolf about how each day is made of points which can be connected if you're lucky, but fall apart if you're not and require lots of effort to have meaning. As if to echo this there's then a scene that cuts from Beethoven on the soundtrack to a field recording of GDR pop music on the car radio.
- Things wind down and the women's group get into trouble because they want to photograph the city rather than specifically focus on women's conditions within it, and so are attacked from all sides. There are all kinds of problems documented with getting funding from people, with the state, with business, as well as being treated fairly or taken seriously in general (Etta has to wrangle with editors who keep printing her photographs without paying her, for instance), all issues that still feel pertinent.
- Rather than a simple dichotomy of dramatisation and documentary, this film constructs a system where there are several projects in motion; the structuring of the film, the photography projects (which are actually carried out even if they are fictions) that the film documents, the project of the GDR and West Berlin within it, and Helke Sander's own life and projects - she became a leading figure in the women's movement after making a famous speech at the height of the unrest in 1968. Rivette's idea of making something happen in the world rather than a film, then documenting it, a structure that reaches outside itself and engages with the world, or the process of imaging the world. A film that catches a moment in time through ideas as simple as incorporating snippets of radio broadcasts or political graffiti. You're also left room to think, wondering what in the film is part of each of these different projects, a scene with a rude magazine editor - is it a re-enaction?
- Some of these questions are cleared up in the final shot which sees Etta wandering off again down a long street, with another fragment from Christa Wolf that strongly suggests the events of the film are based on an actual diary, while adding a little distance by noting all the problems that using that process might entail.
