Women who film away in and through Berlin

On December 16, 2021, during the Lab Femmes de Cinema at Les Arcs Film Festival in France, film analyst Patrizia Simone presented the latest statistics on female professionals in European film production. According to her report on the European feature films produced between 2016 and 2020 and theatrically released in at least one European Market (as tracked in the LUMIERE database) the percentage of female directors was %21, female screenwriters a little higher at %25, female producers were %30, and female cinematographers were only %10. While the ratio of female directors in Germany seems slightly higher at %25, these statistics consider the origin of film works, not the origin of directors. As a researcher who has been based in Berlin for the last five years and intrigued by this report, in this article I reveal how women who are on the move, or who have moved to Berlin during the last decades further their careers in filmmaking in Berlin.
 

By Özgür Çiçek

Zeynep Dadak is a filmmaker who moved to Berlin in June 2018 with the artist in the residency program of Medienboard Berlin. Since then she has been producing in and through Berlin and Istanbul. Before moving to Germany she made two films in Turkey, Blue Wave (2013, co-directed with Merve Kayan) and Invisible to the Eye (2020) both of which are multinational co-productions. For this interview, we met at a café in Berlin and her radiance and energy just caught me while she posed very significant questions.

Can I make a Turkish-language film in Germany that is not necessarily related to Turkey?

During the last five or six years due to unprecedented political reasons many filmmakers, as well as others all over the world had to move out of their country or move beyond their in-house networks and come up with new ways to produce films through international funding. This brought some direct practical processes that need contesting, in as much as there are various undefined barriers that yield overcoming. For instance, Dadak asks, if she is a filmmaker from Turkey does this mean that she should only create narratives that are in the Turkish language and that are based in Turkey? Now that she also lives in Germany, as the only future that may await her there, so to say, is she to make films in the German language one day? Or she asks “Can I make a Turkish language film in Germany that is not necessarily related to Turkey? Or could there be a possibility to use Turkish and German in a film that does not necessarily revolve around migratory narratives?” These practical and simple questions change the way a filmmaker designs and envisions her projects she argues.

Dadak believes what she brings to Berlin is not only her migratory experience but she also brings her gaze, her way of seeing. Thus, she asks, could there be a way of filmmaking outside of certain trends that are already exhausted within what is referred to as migrant filmmaking? What kind of Berlin history would she narrate for instance? What kind of Rosa Luxemburg history would she tell? And is there a space for different practices for filmmaking in Berlin with the use of diverse languages and artistic choices?

Berlin is a melting pot…

Moving to a new city is a dynamic process, with each year passing your ideas and interactions might change and this as Dadak also reveals alters creative choices and practices. Another filmmaker and scriptwriter Mala Ghedia moved to Berlin fifteen years ago. She studied film in Australia and acting in London. She worked in television, film, and theater in the UK, Australia, the USA, India, Switzerland, and Germany. As Patrizio Simone’s report indicates between 2016 and 2020 %83 of European films featured at least one female lead role. Yet when considering the proportion of female and male roles out of the total number of lead roles for each film, between 2016 and 2020 the average share of female roles per film was 38%. Due to this unequal share of female acting and due to other reasons like type casting or age she moved to script writing, producing, and directing. Still, as a non-native and non-citizen filmmaker filmmaking is also pretty limited. Her first short film, in which she acted and co-wrote its script titled No Monsters in Berlin (2017) was made in collaboration with the newcomers to Berlin in 2016. Now with the support from the writer's lab Europe, they are working on a TV series based on this short film. Through this writer’s lab who set up meetings for them, they could get their foot in the door and reach the people who can get this made.

Her other upcoming TV series project, titled ReBIRTHING SAMIRA, has been optioned by Gaumont Productions. Ghedia reflects that one of the main “conflicts” in Germany is, the film industry is very slow in integrating multilingual scripts or characters that are not German. This series will be groundbreaking if made with a production budget from Germany, but still, they have a long way to go even with the biggest production company in Europe behind them!

Ghedia is also directing a film festival in Berlin called Down Under Berlin which brings films from Australia and New Zealand. Her experience in Berlin made it possible for her to direct this festival, as Berlin is the hub of many people and it is a melting pot in itself. There is the old Berlin vs. the new Berlin, and there are ex-pats, and big giant companies are moving in, so there are lots of photos of storytelling, as well as a wide circulation of people who have diverse histories and tastes. This multiplicity creates infinite ways of interacting with the physical space and the spaces the people carry with themselves.

Living abroad may not be fancy or rosy…

Filmmaking became a desire for Megha Wandhwa from a different perspective. She is a migration researcher currently based at Freie Universität Berlin, and she is using ethnography as a method, which means she conducts engaged research with her subjects by recording their sound. But only after recording their interviews with the camera, she found out that the feelings she can sense and internalize are rather different.

As a migration researcher, she emphasizes when people want to move out of their country they may think that the troubles can end with migration. But the reality is different, and you don't leave the troubles behind if you change your location, you just create new experiences and new troubles for yourself. So although people leave their place with many expectations, living abroad may not be that fancy or rosy. And filmmaking can capture this intensity and complexity in a great way. Through film, the people are telling stories directly to the audience and this brings an intense emotional interaction.

Spreading filmmaking amongst women

In her current project, Wadhwa is working together with a group of women who are filming and conducting research at the same time. As she passionately reveals she is spreading filming among women. Her next film is in collaboration with her current project members and will look into migration stories from Asia. She also got a filmmaking education in Manchester, UK, from a training program called filmmaking for fieldwork. It's such a passion and love she feels for filmmaking that she wishes everyone could experience that. Although filming is a lot of work, she reveals that through filmmaking she found her niche.

These three women have diverse motivations for filmmaking but they meet at the common point that if a person desires to make a film, she would definitely find a way to do it no matter where she lives, or where she arrives. As Wadhwa underlines migration comes with challenges, and Patrizia Simone’s report reveals that for women filmmaking in Europe is extra challenging. Even though the film industry is not easy to navigate through and there are obstacles to overcome, those who put their heart into filmmaking find a way to produce, write, and film. What makes Berlin an extraordinary place is that it is a hub where there are many filmmakers from very different places who are struggling to make their films in and through Germany, and this multiplicity creates collaborative knowledge and finds its counterpart through creating and sharing different experiences in a solidary way.