Draft:Redupers: The All-Round Reduced Personality (1977 film)

The All-Round Reduced Personality - Redupers (1977 film)

The All-Round Reduced Personality - Redupers is a German dokufiction film written and directed by the German feminist filmmaker Helke Sander. The film premiered in Rotterdam as part of the International Film Festival on February 9, 1978, and was released in German cinemas on February 27, 1978. Sander's movie is acclaimed as an important representative work of early Women's Cinema, echoing the collective experiences of women living in 1970s West Berlin. In an ironic manner the movie narrates the story of freelance press photographer and single mother Edda Chiemnyjewski (portrayed by Sander), who is a member of a female photography group and struggles to strike a balance between her private and professional responsibilities. When her group receives a commission to showcase Berlin in a photo series to promote a more favourable image of the capital, Edda uses the photography project to raise awareness about the fragmentation and troubled relationship between East and West Berlin.

Plot

Edda Chiemnyjewski works as a self-employed photographer for small newspapers and journals. She struggles to support herself and her daughter financially and often labors until late at night at the expense of her private life. Her clients expect her to behave as a passive spectator, yet Edda is interested in capturing social and political events that she deems truly relevant. At a party run event for elderlies, we observe her engaging with the crowd that she is requested to observe from afar, giving expression to her desire to immerse herself personally and emotionally in her work. She decides to focus her limited resources on things that seem most important to her, and together with three other female photographers, she applies for a photography contest issued by the city of Berlin. The campaign should feature the artists perspectives on their home city Berlin and is intended to stimulate more favourable attitudes among local citizens and tourists. As the female narrator explains, Edda and her group primarily receive the funding for the billboard project because the government felt pressured to demonstrate interest in issues of gender equality, but also because her group requested fewer financial means compared to their male competitors. The women's group however, decides to present its very own take on the project by hinting towards the dichotomies between East and West Berlin and possible opportunities for reconciliation. Edda and her friends set up two major projects. They place a big photograph of the Berlin Wall in front of the very location that is captured in the image. Further, they build a curtain on a viewing platform from which people in West Berlin can gaze onto the East. During the project, the women reach their personal limits. They also encounter political restraints when the investors express their dissatisfaction about the project output. The women are now challenged with overcoming these obstacles and stand their ground as independent female artists.

Themes and interpretations

Female narration

Recalling the narration style of prominent works of the New German Cinema like Yesterday's Girls (1966) or The Artists under the Big Top; Perplexed (1968) by Alexander Kluge Redupers fuses elements of documentary and fiction. Yet, the movie expands on previous techniques by incorporating a feministic perspective that gives a voice to women's quest for identity and independence within a patriarchal society and the male-dominated industry of film. The role of the female photographer in Redupers can be interpreted as an ''attempt to define woman as subject of the cinema; that is, to identify woman as the active, looking subject'' and thus transgress traditional conceptions of the female as a mere ''projection of male fears and fantasies''. By reproducing and repeating women's everyday routines and rhythms, the film tries to establish a female aesthetic experience. Spectators get to experience the urban and domestic spheres through Edda's perspective, often captured by her camera and commented in an ironic manner by the female narrator. ''The female narrator is a voice as unanchored in time and space as the numerous radio voices we hear throughout the film'' and ''insinuates itself into the cracks of everyday life''. Both, the visual and acoustic means are intended to frame objects in an artistic way and make spectators become aware of the act of looking, of themselves as spectators and of intentionality. In the film, Berlin functions as the landscape that is molded and modified by the female artist through billboards and installations. The resulting artworks can be seen as exemplary for the conscious creation of certain conditions of perception. Not only in acoustic but also in visual terms, the women become storytellers.

The Berlin cityscape

The movie opens with a long tracking shot of the cityscape, exploring the divided city of Berlin as an aesthetic phenomenon. In her photographs Edda tries to highlight the similarities between East and West Berlin, the capitalist and the socialist public realms. The Berlin wall which is featured in many photographs is symbolic of the ideological divisions, creating a ''false dichotomy'' between both urban entities. These ''false dichotomies'' are also to be detected between the private and public existence of women, which have been widely criticized by feminist thinkers. From a historic point of view, women used to be limited to the private sphere, comprising family and household, while men dominated the public sphere. The women in Redupers use photography in order to bridge both spheres and create a sense of rootedness, belonging and wholeness. Helke Sander summarises her work as a film ''about a fragmented everyday life in the equally fragmented city of Berlin''.