Frauen in Berlin

Chetna Vora made Frauen in Berlin as an exchange student in the GDR, a grand collection of stories and impressions, from the perspective of women. A work only made more interesting by its material history and survival through the medium of VHS.

Who knows how many films would have been lost forever if it weren’t for a lousy quality VHS tape? Frauen in Berlin is one such nearly lost work. The graduation project of Chetna Vora, a student from the Indian state of Gujarat, who had come to the German Democratic Republic through the nation’s foreign student programme. Originally she had set out to learn book printing, but after a while found herself at the GDR’s film school in Potsdam, Babelsberg, where she studied directing.

Frauen in Berlin became a candid epic of GDR life from a female point of view, featuring interviews with women of all ages, from teenagers to an octogenarian. Vora was supposed to only make a short, not a feature. When she refused to cut the film down, official measures were taken. Sensing impending doom, Vora found someone with access to a VHS camera and taped Frauen in Berlin, while projecting it on a wall or sheet. The original film material has vanished. This VHS is all that remains.

– Olaf Möller

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