Becoming Black

The International Women’s Film Festival Dortmund and Cologne invites audiences to a book presentation. In this book, three generations of female directors give their own account of what they filmed. Their texts open up new ways of grappling with filmmaking from an East German perspective between 1990 and today, valuable counter-memories that defy any sort of historical simplifications. The anthology includes accounts from those working at the time, interviews, and detailed film analyses and provides a snapshot of the era from many different perspectives. Jane Chirwa and Cornelia Klauß read from texts by Ines Johnson-Spain, Johanna-Yasirra Kluhs and Tamara Trampe. Afterwards, BECOMING BLACK (Ines Johnson-Spain, Germany  2019) will be screened, the story of a little girl in East Germany in the 1960s whose white parents tells her that her black skin is a coincidence and has no significance. 40 years later, an autobiographical documentary seems like the only suitable form to ask the right questions. (Betty Schiele)