Die allseitig reduzierte Persönlichkeit – Redupers

The opening tracking shot (the first of many) along the Berlin Wall lasts nearly three minutes, passing war-scarred facades housing dreary stores, firewalls, boarded-up pubs and fenced-off haulage yards. It references perhaps the defining Berlin topos: the divided, walled-in city. Freelance photojournalist and single mother Edda Chiemnyjewski (played by Helke Sander) lives a divided life of her own in the Western Zone, marked by the dual burden of the two responsibilities she juggles and the absurd conditions she is forced to work in. Together with a women’s photography group, she tries to position new, personal perspectives on the city in public space through large-format photographs. Subverting the boundary between fiction and documentary and teeming with delicate self-deprecation and a desire to experiment, REDUPERS creates two portraits at once: a city literally reduced on all sides and the (im)possibility of life as a professional woman. (mg)