Mein Feind + Lieber Herr Doktor

Mein Feind (My Enemy)
Bettina Flitner, BRD/FRG, 1993, 30 min. German with English subtitles 

Introduced by Elisa Jochum 

In the early 1990s, Bettina Flitner asked women on the street the provocative question: “Do you have an enemy? And if so, what would you do to them if you could do it without being punished?” Flitner put the equally provocative answers to the question on large-format photographs, showing the women who answered them holding toy weapons. She placed these photos in public spaces in Cologne, asked for reactions and filmed the discussions that ensued. The skilful interweaving of multiple media and discourse levels during this intervention set off a range of reactions, from vocal outrage to quiet accounts of the experience of rape and helplessness. The film premiered at the Forum of the Berlin Film Festival and received awards both at home and abroad. (FR)

Lieber Herr Doktor (Dear Doctor) 
Filmgruppe Schwangerschaftsabbruch, Switzerland 1977,  63 min. German with English subtitles 

Introduced by Seraina Winzeler

In 1977, a group of feminists, politically active doctors, and filmmakers from the Zurich Film Collective decided to engage in a political debate by making a film. The referendum on the public petition to decriminalize abortion in the first trimester was imminent. Lieber Herr Doktor (Dear Doctor) shows documentary footage of an abortion, a panel discussion in Ennenda in the canton of Glarus, and portraits of several women who talk about their experiences of abortion. This “intervention film” intended to spark discussion, which it succeeded in doing: according to the members of the collective, it was the most widely shown documentary film in Switzerland at the time. A contribution to a heated debate caught between activism and adverse reactions. (FR)

Seraina Winzeler is a film scholar, archivist and head of education at the Cinémathèque Suisse.