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)