A series of emails that the filmmaker wrote to her late mentor, the renowned American documentary filmmaker Robert KRAMER, are woven throughout the plot of a story as the boundaries of life, distance, language, identity and nationality are re-examined from the perspective of Elodie, her daughter.
My mother has been an occasional subject for me ever since I first started making films.
Because she is my mother, she is the person I feel closest to. But when I'm filming her, I see sides of her that I didn't know existed. I've learned that while she is my mother, she is also another, unknowable, human being.
Karaoke Cafe BOSA
Karaoke Cafe BOSA is located in the suburbs of Osaka, Japan. It's a place where elderly neighbors gather to chat and sing. Cafe BOSA leaves traces in these days of unrest as a time capsule of the Anthropocene.
Thus A Noise Speaks
When Kacchi came back home for summer break from abroad, they came out to her family as a sexual minority. Their mother and father couldn’t take it and answered in negative. Though Kacchi had depression due to parent's reactions, They decided to face her family again through filmmaking about the ‘coming-out’.
Wittstock, Wittstock
A new kind of normality has taken hold in Wittstock, which the filmmaker has captured for us for the one last time. The big factory is no longer there. As for the three women workers, Elsbeth goes to retraining courses, always on the hunt for a job; Renate has now been working for five years as a chambermaid in a small hotel; Edith, who used to be so rebellious, has moved to Heilbronn for work and become very tranquil.
Modern Times in Wittstock
Although the director had planned to end the Wittstock documentary series at Life in Wittstock, he continued the project to capture the changes taking place in East Germany after the German reunification. This sixth instalment returns to the town shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The three women workers experience various forms of instability and upheaval when the factory is liquidated; Edith leaves and start a new life in Württemberg.
Life in Wittstock
In 1974, the filmmaker began his 23-year journey of filming the women workers in a newly built textile factory in the town of Wittstock, East Germany. Life in Wittstock is the fifth instalment in the series; by then, nearly 3,000 women were working in the factory. In this film, three of the workers talk about the changes in the town, their promotions at work, and the choices and compromises they have made in their lives over the years.
