FRG 1977 | A report by Edith Marcello (former Schmidt), Peter Nicolay, Renate Heil, Henrietta Loch, Regine Heuser, Harald Stief | Production: ZDF | Colour | digital | 44 min | italian, french, danish, german OV with german SUB

Feminist street theatre campaigns in Frankfurt and Padua; the cover of Patti Smith's Horses on the shelf of the Munich women's bookshop; excerpts from RÉPONSE DES FEMMES by Agnès Varda and TAKE IT LIKE A MAN, MADAME! by Danish collective Røde Søster (Red Sisters); the legendary album by the Flying Lesbians on a table at the Frauenoffensive publishing house... all this is introduced by a short digression on the first women's movement. The amount of solidarity-based insight into the historical momentum of the women's movement that Edith Marcello packs into this 44-minute ZDF report in 1977 is fascinating. Over and over, groups speak out in women's centres and initiatives – and later, we hear from workers in a self-managed sewing factory in Italy. This look at the European South is characteristic of Marcello's work biography. Italian feminists sing an anthem from the movement that frames the report: "We women look at ourselves, we each know the lives of the others. There are more and more of us; we want our freedom and the courage to fight against what is normal. We want the strength to live how we want, and the power to be ourselves". (Gaby Babić, 2023)

FRG 1979 | Directors: Edith Marcello (former Schmidt), Beate Scheunemann | Camera, Photography: Peter Nicolay | Editor: Anneliese Weigand | Sound: Egon Paschke | Production: ZDF | Colour | digital | 40 min | icelandic, german OV with german SUB | ZDF

A central issue of the autonomous women's movement of the 1970s was unpaid housework –predominantly done by women – and the related social division of labour into the spheres of production and reproduction. In 1972, the international "Wages for Housework" campaign was launched – "Lohn für Hausarbeit" in West Germany. In "WIR FRAUEN SIND UNBEZAHLBAR", Edith Marcello documents this politicisation of housework, and her analysis attests to the Federal Republic's hostility towards women and children.

Based on scenes from the women's strike in Iceland on 24 October 1975, Marcello seeks out various women's groups, initiatives, and working circles in West Germany. The women talk about their workloads, the confinement of small families, poor wages, and the onset of the women's movement. Two househusbands who report on their experiences seem very disillusioned. Concrete domestic work is made visible in photo-film sequences. In anonymous street scenes, Marcello records faces that look into the camera and then pause in freeze-frames. It's a cinematic gesture that calls for socialisation – yet wages and housework remain "incompatible" today. (Gaby Babić, 2023)