Dortmund International Film Festival
March 28 - 1 April (Germany)

The world as seen by film is full of kisses. At the Eighth Dortmund International Film Festival, femme totale will be tracking down the kiss as perhaps the symbol of cinema's favourite subject: love, love, love. In fact, if it hadn't been for love, passion and emotion, the cinema might never have been so triumphant. As early as 1896, the close-up of a kiss lasting all of thirty seconds thrilled audiences so much that eventually -- from constant replay -- the celluloid disintegrated.

Femme totale is the only film festival in Germany with a thematic approach. We present an array of films, workshops, discussions, concerts, lectures and exhibitions all linked by one unitary idea. This year, for the second time, we are offering a special country focus to supplement that theme, the spotlight being on women filmmakers from Brazil.

On a voyage through the history of the cinema, femme totale will attempt to answer the burning question of all time: Who kissed whom, when and why? We have snatched kisses of all shapes and sizes from the archives and the libraries. The first kiss, the last kiss and kisses stifled.

Who kissed whom?

Proceeding from the very first film kiss of all, this group of films highlight a "typical" film for each decade of the 20th century. As the backdrop changes, so too do the filmmakers shift their gaze. The extravagant Mae West will be represented by one of her libidinous comedies from the 1930s whilst, for the 1950s, we will be showing the author and leading actress Mirjami Kuosmanen in the Finish classic The White Reindeer. In the early 1960s, Agnès Varda was already caricaturing the idyll of the bourgeois nuclear family in Le Bonheur. Meanwhile in the 1990s, the protagonist in Lynne Stopkevich's Kissed is an undertaker by trade who has developed an inner relationship with her "customers". Yet the necrophiliac eroticism of the film delights rather than disturbs.

First Kiss

First love, grand emotion, hope, hurt and disappointment. Nominated for the European Film Award 2000, Georgian director Nana Djordjadze's Summer or 27 Missing Kisses uses fairytale-like pictures and that incomparable Eastern European charm to tell the tragicomic story of the 14-year-old Sybille whose arrival in an unidentified small town throws all its inhabitants into a frenzy of summer love.

Kin is the third feature film by South African Elaine Proctor (Palme d'Or 1993). It is a modern love story set in an ancient place. Anna, a researcher specialising in elephants, lives with her brother, a priest, in the breathtaking Namibian Desert. But when an unknown American suddenly turns up, the brother-and-sister relationship begins to veer out of control. "I wanted to make an African film, made from the inside, with an insider's experience of the complexity of the place", says Elaine Proctor.

Love, freedom, passion and jealousy. The Hungarian film Jadviga's Pillow [H 1999] takes us behind the scenes of a marriage full of passion and pain. Against the background of ethnic conflict at the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Krisztina Deák paints a big picture of society.

In her film Two Women [Iran 1999], Tahmineh Milani relates the opportunities and limitations that self-determined love and partnership poses for women in Iran today.

The American Avant-Garde

New York indie artist M.M.Serra will present two film programmes that reflect the concept of desire and the representation of female sexuality as viewed through the lens of American women filmmakers. For example, works such as of Carolee Schneemann's Fuses - the first ever explicitly feminist erotic film. This homage to a relationship of ten years breaks down the barriers between private and public domains. Similarly, Barbara Hammer's Dyketactics -- one of the earliest lesbian-erotic experimental films -- is an intense montage consisting of 110 pictures of touch and touching. Mayem directed by Abigail Child is a mix of film noir, soap opera and thriller and was inspired by de Sade's Justine and Vertov. M.M.Serra is Executive Director of the Filmmakers' Cooperative, the leading international distributors of independent, experimental and underground films and videos.

Young Actresses

In this program, the limelight is on exceptional young actresses who tend to play unconventional figures away from mainstream TV and the current fad of what passes as "comedy". Undoubtedly one such actress is Meret Becker, a unique figure on the contemporary German film scene. At once tender and tough, ironic and confident, she prefers the difficult character parts - scurrilous, stubborn, uncompromising and often at the edge of the abyss. It is at Meret's own wish that femme totale is showing her first international film Painted Angels in which she plays a prostitute. This oppressive story of a brothel in the Wild West does away with the bawdy broad of the traditional cowboy film. We are pleased to announce that the scriptwriter of the film, Anna Mottram, will also be on hand at the Festival.

Historical Movies

femme totale will again be showcasing a number of silent movies relevant to our theme. Frances Marion, star scriptwriter of the 1930s, made this melodrama in 1921. Entitled The Love Light, it stars Mary Pickford in her first role directed by a woman director. The entire repertoire of lip-trembling emotion and extravagant gesture as exhibited by the passionate Italian divas of the 1910s can be seen in the silent movie compilation Diva Dolorosa. Thanks to It, Clare Bow was to epitomise the "flapper", the popular ideal of femininity in the America of the day i.e. free and unconventional. The pianist and chanteuse Popette Betancor, German Cabaret Prizewinner in 1998, will be accompanying the film on the piano. A selection of 1920s French skin flicks will kick off femme totale's now traditional Film All-Nighter.

New! Advancement Award for Camerawomen

femme totale proudly presents the first German advancement award specifically for new generation camerawomen. The proportion of women in professional camera operator associations is under 5%! By instituting this award, femme totale wishes to initiate a discussion about women being underrepresented in the world of film production. At the same time, of course, it is hoped that the award will spur the motivation of young camerawomen. The competition for this unique award - endowed with DM 10,000 -is open to camerawomen submitting either their graduation work or their first or second film. The award is to be presented every two years during the femme totale film festival in Dortmund and this year the jury will be chaired by Polish camera operator Jolanta Dylevska.

But that's not all. In conjunction with the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences, femme totale will be organising an international conference How to Improve the World - Women behind the Camera. Main topic on the agenda will be the training situation for aspiring camerawomen at colleges and universities. Renowned camera technicians who have signalled their willingness to attend are: Babette Mangolte and Sandi Sissel (USA), Sophie Maintigneux and Elfi Miekesch (D), Sue Gibson (GB) and Nurith Aviv (Israel).

Brazil

Our country focus this year is another premier for Germany: a comprehensive retrospective of women filmmakers from Brazil. The curtains open on the first motion pictures to be made by women filmmakers in the 1940s which have survived to this day - i.e. works by Carla Civelli and Gilda Abreu. Also worth singling out here are Tizuka Yamasaki's Gaijín - the Road of Freedom and movies from Tata Amaral and Laís Bodansky.

Apart from the depiction of grand emotion, these Brazilian films deal with issues such as the landless movement, migration and colonialisation. Lucia Murat's documentary film Que Bom Te Ver Viva, is a sensitive account of the victims of military dictatorship. Our Focus on Brazil will showcase documentaries, feature films, short movies and experimental films - all works by independent committed women directors. Their films find expressive pictures for the life in Brazil but they rarely find their way into the cinemas. A number of Brazilian (women) filmmakers will be in Dortmund for the Festival to take part in group discussions and provide information about their work.

As usual, then, femme totale team are using the festival theme to comb all the genres, aesthetic forms and different formats, looking for the smallest and the biggest gestures on the screen. From the golden age of the silent movie to the latest productions.