Stefanie Schulte Strathaus

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L'invitation au voyage

"Film is an eye wide open to life, stronger than ours, seeing what we do not see." Germaine Dulac, L'essence du cinéma: L'idée visuelle, in: Les cahiers du moins 16/17, 1925.

Daisies

"This film is dedicated to those who get upset only over a stomped-upon bed of lettuce."

Věra Chytilová, in 'Daisies' (1966).

Portrait of Jason

"When I saw the rushes I knew the real story of what happened that night in my living room had to include all of us, and so our question-reaction probes, our irritations and angers, as well as our laughter remain part of the film, essential to the reality of one winter's night in 1967." Shirley Clarke, Milestone Films. "Portrait of Jason press kit" (PDF). Milestone Films. p. 6. Retrieved 28 May 2013.

SAUTE MA VILLE

"You see an adolescent girl, 18 years old, go into a kitchen, do ordinary things, but in a way that is off-kilter, and finally commit suicide. The opposite of Jeanne Dielman: Jeanne, that was resignation. Here, it is rage and death." Chantal Akerman, in: Sight & Sound, Volume 25, issue 9, September 2015.

One Way or Another

"Because of them [the audience] and for them we will have to make a cinema without concessions, a cinema that touches their interests at the root, a cinema capable of expressing them in their contradictions and that aims to help make of all of us men capable of considering life as an eternal conflict with the environment, in which only man must win. Will it be too ambitious? Will we be able to achieve it? That must be the purpose". Sara Gomez, in: "Los documentalistas y sus concepciones", Pensamiento crítico, no. 42, La Habana, julio de 1970, p. 96.

Letter from my Village

"Here is my village. You will be living a while with me." (1)

“My films are collective works in which everyone takes an active part.” (2)

(1) Safi Faye, in: Matthias De Groof (2018) Ethnographic Film’s Relation to African Cinema: Safi Faye and Jean Rouch, Visual Anthropology, 31:4-5, 426-444, DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2018.1521192.

(2) Safi Faye, in: "How an African Woman Can Be": African Women Filmmakers Construct WomenSheila J. Petty, Discourse Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring 1996), pp. 72-88.

BILDNIS EINER TRINKERIN

"The movement of transformation in this film has the opposite trajectory as the previous film Madame X. There women come from very specific backgrounds to journey into the unknown, here a woman without a name comes from an unknown place and engages in a most specific sight-seeing tour of Berlin based on her interest in alcoholic beverages. In a sense this project also represents the exploration of the unknown, and death and destruction await her equally at the end of each journey, that to the extreme outer regions of adventure as well as that of total narcissistic retreat into the self." Ulrike Ottinger, quoted from ulrikeottinger.com.

Born in Flames

"What I wanted to create in Born in Flames was a kind of fantasy about how various people could come together across race and class lines. That’s why I call the film “science fiction.” [...]

I did not expect Born in Flames to be relevant today. I thought that those women’s issues expressed in the film would be resolved. But that’s clearly still not the case." Lizzie Borden, MUBI, 14.06.2021.

My Country, My Country

"I took the risk to tell this story because I believed there was a story that wasn't being (and woulnd't be) told". Laura Poitras, in: 36. Berlinale Forum, catalogue 2006.

Al-khoroug lel-nahar

"We are trying to do films that are revolutionary in content, take risks and are adventurous in low-budget form," she says. "This is how things will change." (1)

“This film may show blatant ugliness, but it reflects a reality that we all live, one that we should meditate on from a distance, so that we can figure out what to do about it”. (2)

(1) Hala Lotfy, Spiegel International, 14.2.2013.

(2) Hala Lotfy, Ahram Online, 10.12.2013.

Further remarks

I decided to let the women directors, whose works I chose because they have had a lasting impact on my understanding of cinema and society, speak for themselves, since their voices have been heard too little.