Gisela Tuchtenhagen

Documentary film about the therapy facility ‘Violetta Clean’, founded in Berlin in 1983, the first inpatient therapy facility in Germany for drug-addicted girls and women.

Greta is born lifeless and dies. Four years later, her midwife stands trial for manslaughter. The verdict: guilty. Ban from practicing her profession, prison sentence, damages. After her release from prison, nothing is the same as before.

Saleswomen in a supermarket discover that they are paid less than their male colleagues who do the same work. They decide to take action. The band Ton Steine Scherben sings along that “Everything changes if you change it / But you can't win as long as you're alone!” With a lay cast, the film fulfils the demand for solidarity that it preaches – “this film was made by saleswomen and housewives. They came up with the story and acted themselves. The film students helped them”

In her former life, Johanna K. worked as a civil engineer – Mr Kamermans – in Holland, building dykes and roads. Then she discovered her love of beautiful clothes and cabaret, and found her calling as a dancer. Pleasantly, calmly, and with admirable thoughtfulness, she recounts various stages of her eventful life between St. Pauli and Ibiza, between her own gender identity and social constraints and expectations.

The film focuses on a group of people with various disabilities who are helped by the Hamburg-based association “Insel” to lead largely independent lives. We see them at home, at work, and at the “Insel” premises, where they meet every Thursday afternoon to drink coffee and talk.

How do people look back on a life that was torn from their hands by arbitrariness, secret police, and the justice system? Gisela Tuchtenhagen and Margot Neubert-Maric portray three former prisoners whose experiences in prison in the GDR left lifelong scars. They fell into the clutches of the GDR justice system at a young age.

The autobiographical documentary is about the existence, birth and farewell of my son Martin Tim, about personal questions and developments after the confrontation with the shocking diagnosis - above all about the sudden demand on me to decide on the duration of life and the conditions of the death of one of my four children.

Women from Turkey and Mecklenburg are working together side-by-side at a fish-processing factory in Lübeck. As they work, they share stories about their lives, including their sorrows, griefs, hopes, and dreams, while expressing their longing for home and feelings of being lost in a foreign place.

The film develops 5 questions about documentary film against the background of the media-political situation of the early 1970s in West Germany. The following topics are developed: (1) the personal approach of filmmaker Klaus Wildenhahn to his profession; (2) the technical and technical approach of cameraman Rudolf Körösi; (3) the development of documentary film based on John Grierson's British School of Documentary Film; (4) the working conditions and political framework for the production of documentary films at WDR and NDR; (5) the constitutive characteristics of socially relevant documentary film.

Two women, a mother and her daughter, one of whom immigrated to Germany from Turkey and the other grew up in Germany, describe life between two cultures. The mother came as a guest worker, while her daughter had a painful arranged marriage.

A cinematic portrait of Maria, a 13-year-old girl who has been living in Hamburg, Germany, with her family from Spain for several years. The filmmaker observes Maria in her everyday life and her relationship with the people around her - her parents, her neighbor (the filmmaker's mother) and Nina, a German girl about the same age.

Iris is an Elvis fan and part of a group of unemployed women who, in the scope of the first West German retraining program for women, are being trained in Essen in the "male professions" of electrical and metal work. Monika Held and Gisela Tuchtenhagen accompany the group for five weeks. The women report sexism, low self-esteem and the multiple burdens they must bear. To make any progress, they need support and one another – the regular weekly meeting where they share their experiences is moved to the pub.

The two-part documentary introduced people in the villages and less populated areas of the Federal Republic. The prevailing structures, worries, hardships and hopes were shown - a portrait of the 1970s.