Short film programme & artist talk: In Her Shoes

Credit: Margit © Gerbaulet 2002, video still

Short film programme and artist talk, moderated by Silke Schönfeld and Florian Wüst.

 

 

Margit	Alex Gerbaulet, DE 2002, 21:00 min.
getty abortions	Franzis Kabisch, DE 2023, 22:00 min.
Semra Ertan	Cana Bilir-Meier, DE/AT 2013, 07:30 min.
Proxys – Part 1	Katrin Esser, DE 2023, 11:00 min.

 

 

In Her Shoes invites a change of perspective. The boundaries between private and political spaces become blurred in the four short films, which demand our emotional involvement as viewers precisely because of their autobiographical references. In their very own visual languages, the filmmakers allow us to immerse ourselves in experiences and memories in which the dark light of patriarchal conditions refracts: the story of grandparents that began with a rape, the invisibility of the topic of abortion in the social image of women, the dehumanising effect of xenophobia, the responsibility for care work as a result of one's own mother's Alzheimer's disease. How would it feel to be in all these shoes?

Curated by Silke Schönfeld and Florian Wüst

Followed by an audience discussion with Katrin Esser, Franzis Kabisch, Cana Bilir-Meier and Silke Schönfeld, moderated by Florian Wüst.

 

About the films:

 

Margit, Alex Gerbaulet, DE 2002, 21:00

‘When I first enter the house where my grandmother last lived and where she burnt to death just a few months after my mother's death, I take a camera with me. I hold the lens in front of my eye like a shield and feel my way through sooty rooms and fragmented memories.’ Supplemented by family photos and newspaper cuttings, Alex Gerbaulet reveals a German post-war story of repression, suppression and domestic violence in Margit.

 

getty abortions, Franzis Kabisch, DE 2023, 22:00

What images do we associate with the topic of abortion and why? Where do these images and the emotional scripts in our heads come from? How do they influence women who (want to) have an abortion and how do they shape the social debate? Franzis Kabisch examines these questions with clarity and humour in her personal desktop documentary getty abortions. In doing so, she scrutinises the evidential value of filmic and photographic ‘testimonies’, which need not only be questioned in the age of stock photos, editing software and artificial intelligence.

 

Semra Ertan, Cana Bilir-Meier, DE/AT 2013, 07:30

Semra Ertan, born in Turkey in 1956, moved to the Federal Republic of Germany to join her parents in 1972. She worked as a technical draughtswoman and interpreter and wrote over 350 poems. The title of one of her poems is ‘My name is foreigner’. Ten years later, she set herself on fire in the middle of a Hamburg street as a sign against xenophobia and racism - triggering a long overdue public debate. ‘Cana Bilir-Meier assembles a filmic remembrance of her aunt from Semra Ertan's poems and fragments of historical television reports.’ (Betty Schiel)

 

Proxys – Part 1, Katrin Esser, DE 2023, 11:00

Katrin Esser's Proxys - Part 1 is the first of three chapters of an experimental documentary film that tells the story of the progression, care and death of the artist's mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. ‘The film explores the possibilities of making stories legible for oneself and others in their subjectivity and density of information, combining the narrative perspectives of the Polish carer Violetta, who lived with the family for several months, and those of the artist. The only location is the flat, which alternates between living space, museum and crime scene and is examined for traces of the events.’ (Clara Hofmann)

 

The short film programme In Her Shoes will take place as part of the Kleiner Freitag event series in the HMKV premises on level 3, where the exhibition Silke Schönfeld: You Can't Make This Up will be shown from 11 October 2024 to 2 February 2025.