DE 2006 | Director and Sound: Quinka Stoehr | Camera: Volker Tittel (BVK) | Editing: Margot Neubert-Marić | Editor: Katya Mader (ZDF/3Sat) | Production: StoehrMedien in Co-production mit ZDF/3Sat | Colour | 35mm | 84 min | german OV | Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek

[A] multi-layered, moving portrait of the filmmaker and winner of multiple Grimme Awards Gisela Tuchtenhagen, one of the first German camerawomen of the 1970s, who has left a sustained mark on the documentary film genre ever since. This cinematic journey takes us to key settings from her past and recounts her dark childhood days in a reformatory in the late 1950s and her wild times in Paris, where she fled at the ripe age of 16 after several failed attempts to escape her locked-down home. Gisela Tuchtenhagen took the inner revolt from back then, the urge to set something on fire, and converted it into positive energy. "Finding a means of expression in photography and film enabled me to survive," as she puts it. Through flashbacks, diary entries, film quotations and scenes from the past, a complex picture emerges of a worldly-wise woman whose sensitive artistic work is inextricably linked with her biography. (Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, 2006)

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