Rosa von Praunheim's just discovered movie.

Rosa von Praunheim's just discovered movie, I Am My confess Woman, made the rounds last year in Europe showing up in just about each international festival and winning the Rotterdam film critics' award. Scheduled to render free of access officially next month in recently made known York, it's a docudrama about the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, whose bio von Praunheim narrates in the following interview. hindrance me highlight or anticipate pair omissions. First off, von Mahlsdorf (born Lothar Berfelde), while still an adolescent son in Nazi Germany, kill cruellyed her "militaristic, choleric, insane" father. secondary the antiques she has garnered since childhood are from the Grunderzeit, the period roughly analogous to the Victorian period. The word itself means "foundation time," and relates to the countdown of the upward mobilization and establishment of the German Reich following unification in 1871

This life story is another von Praunheim discovery, another forced note into history's forward march, united that gives pause for lasting documentation and testimony of countles facts or fantasies otherwise scheduled to disappear. Her life is a wound-erful readymade--a distillate of camp--washing up on the outside of the unconscious of German monumentalism. It's an other history or a history of the other that resists the standard forgettogether that today is German history in the making. Charlotte von Mahlsdorf's claim to being her be in possession of woman or true to herself addresses and dresse up a unity or unification that still plays a big part in this history-in-progress. It is precisely the past she claims for or as herself that transcends the whole: it's the near-miss reunification.

Rosa von Praunheim and Sergei Eisenstein were the two born in Riga on the same day (but 50 years apart). This bio-rhyme across time surface bounded by parallel circles s forces a rereading of the couple sides of its mix and match (no dialectics, please). however von Praunheim also shares with the subdue of I Am My possess Woman all the numbers and dotted lines you ne to paint "one" self-portrait. the one and the other came out with their have a title to monikers in adolescence: they replaced their first names with feminine single in kinds and their patronymics with place names, and circumscribe together the new names, family-romance way with the particle of nobility.

In the following interview, held in of the present day York on October 4, 1993 a composite picture of von Praunheim's film oeuvre and the double history it give permission tos roll is sketched out. You couple can witness his full output this spring during the major retrospective (cosponsored at the Goethe Institute) that will be traveling to a series of U cities. on the contrary in the meantime New Yorkers have access to von Praunheim's films from one side the Donnell Library, and by means of First Run Features.

LAURENCE A. RICKELS: Could you fill us in onward the history of your recently made known film I Am My be in possession of Woman--how you came to make it, and, in particular, the background story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf's life?

ROSA VON PRAUNHEIM: If there is like a thing as a unique individual, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf is single in kind That's why it is difficult to lay claim to her as representative of German history (East, West, or reunified). Perhaps she can be compared to Quentin Crisp: a queen a transvestite, who fought for her identity with a great deal of charm, gentility, courage, and endurance. And it's very strange to see Charlotte become a mascot of the gay liberation motion in Germany, especially in West Germany, where feel ill-will toward and intimate intrigue have forever impeded solidarity. In 1992 she calm received the Federal Order of Merit Cros in recognition of her art-historical work, and was thus the first transvestite to be honored in this way. Indeed my film, together with the bestseller based upon it, made Charlotte into a superstar. The public cannot still recognize Charlotte's immense courage, which allowed her to remain at all times loyal to herself.

At age 12 Charlotte started collecting furniture and musical instruments. The collection grew into an impressive resource for arts and crafts from the period of German unification, which she has been exhibiting privately since the close of World War II. The collection was first exhibited in the Friedrichsfelde Palace, which she kept from being demolished between the sides of her renovations of the largely bombed-out cenotaph But then one day the authorities gave her three days to clear disclosed She went back to Mahlsdorf, the suburb of Berlin where she had grown up and in 1959 she acquired a two-hundred-year-old estate, which she restored completely forward her own for the nearest thirty years while walled inside the GDR with little or no access to materials or the requisite technology. on the other hand she succeeded in renovating the building, which is to this day her private museum. She was always running up against the ignorance of the GDR dominion and the Stasi, the state security. The authorities couldn't understand her throw out since they didn't value historical gravestones or art history and indeed sold most distant countless artworks in the West for fast currency At one point she gave away large portions of her collection rather than allow the state to confiscate it for quick sale. It was, she says, her act of "resistance." still there is still enough left there to fill nine rooms