GB 1979 | Director, Script, Editor, Production: Sally Potter | Cast: Colette Laffont, Rose English, Soundy Gacon, Vincent Meehan | b/w | 16mm | 34 min | english OV | women Make Movies / Adventure Pictures
Sally Potter's film THRILLER was released in 1980. Her reinterpretation of Puccini's opera "La Bohème" has since become a classic of feminist film theory. Exemplary for the deconstruction of the Hollywood film, THRILLER turns the conventional feature film role of the woman as a romantic victim on its head. Mimi, the heroine of the opera and a seamstress who must die before the curtain falls, decides to investigate the reasons for her death. In doing so, she also begins to explore the rift that separated her from the opera's other female character, "bad girl" Musetta. THRILLER is as rich in sounds and images as it is theoretically compelling, providing the audience with a long-awaited recognition of their version of the story.
“Thriller becomes an exemplary sign of how pleasurable and how illuminating such a new feminist art might be” (B. Ruby Rich, 1980)
| Acronyms | |
|---|---|
| amer. | American English |
| b/w | Black and white |
| OV | Original version |
| SUB | Subtitles |
| +SUB | electronic live subtitling (below the image) |
| INT | Intertitles |
| Countries | |
|---|---|
| AT | Austria |
| FRG | Federal Republic of Germany (historic) |
| BLR | Belarus |
| DE | Germany |
| CAN | Canada |
| GDR | German Democratic Republic (historic) |
| EGY | Egypt |
| FR | France |
| GB | Great Britain |
| URY | Uruguay |
| BRA | Brasil |
| SWE | Sweden |
| UKR | Ukraine |
| PL | Poland |
| IDN | Indonesia |
| PRT | Portugal |
| HRV | Croatia |
| ECU | Ecuador |
| HUN | Hungary |
| AUS | Australia |
| IT | Italy |
| MEX | Mexico |
| IND | India |
Following the film, a discussion of
"... und von allem anderen die Hälfte / …and half of all the rest"
will take place between Hildegard Westbeld, Annette Förster, and Madeleine Bernstorff.
Moderated by Karola Gramann
film worker, born in 1951 in Lippstadt. She studied German, journalism, and pedagogy at Ruhr University Bochum from 1970-73, and was a member of the Studienkreis Film. From 1973-77, she was an assistant director and dramaturge at Schauspielhaus Bochum and headed the cinema BO-Kino. She moved to Berlin in spring 1977. 1977/78 Freunde der deutschen Kinemathek distribution department; 1978 management of the cinema release of REDUPERS for Basis-Film Verleih. In 1977, together with Ulrike Herdin, Christiane Kaltenbach, and Gertrud Zyber, Westbeld established the initiative FRAUEN im KINO. 1977-1980 collaborator on the magazine Frauen und Film. In 1979 and 1980, she founded and ran CHAOS FILM, distributor and promotor of films by women. 1979 founding member and long-term board member of Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen (Association of Women Film Workers). 1982-1992 venue manager of the Akademie der Künste for the Internationales Forum des Jungen Films during the Berlinale. 1991-2001 involvement in the setting up of Tatjana Studio Minsk (Belarus), member of the team that organised the International Women’s Film Festival in Minsk. Since the late 1970s, employed as a unit manager, assistant director, and location scout on almost 100 film and TV productions, national and international, diverse genres.
Madeleine Bernstorff (Berlin), writer und film curator. Research-based, mostly collaborative projects. Co-founder of Kino Sputnik Berlin in 1984 as well as the feminist film group Blickpilotin in 1989. Film/video programmes about Early Cinema and the Suffragette Movement, filmmaker René Vautier in an internationalistic and anti-colonialistic context, Carole Roussopoulos’ video activism, „Kamerahelm“-artist Margaret Raspé or the political/technical surroundings of film activist Ella Bergmann-Michel’s works. Bernstorff is a member of the commission of International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and teaches film history. Occasionally films/videos of the „small kind“: trailers, video-letters, Super8-movies. In 2016/17 she produced the 23-video-series NSU-Komplex auflösen! with the group SPOTS.
Born 1955, lives and works in Amsterdam. Since 1979 film critic and festival curator specialized in films made by women. Curator of the lesbian program of the International Lesbian and Gay Filmfestival Holland (1986 and 1991) and San Francisco (1991). Since 1994 film historical research on woman filmmakers in the silent cinema; lecturer in film theory and history at Dutch universities. In 1999 co-founder of the international Conference ‘Gender and Silent Cinema’ (since 1981 continued as bi-annual conferences ‘Women and the Silent Screen’. She was awarded her PhD in 2005 on the theatre and film careers of silent cinema actresses and directors Adriënne Solser, Musidora and Nell Shipman. Her comprehensive study of these careers, Women in the Silent Cinema. Histories of Fame and Fate, was published 2017 by Amsterdam University Press. Further archival research i.a. on Asta Nielsen and Theatre and the (largely lost) oeuvre of the German scenarist, actress and film director Rosa Porten.
