LIFE ON TAPE (Bilder (m)einer Mutter)

The Portland German Film Festival will show in our Monthly Film Series, a variety of GERMAN or GERMAN language films from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. On the 2nd Tuesday of each month, audiences will have a chance to see these films on a regular basis at the CLINTON STREET THEATER. (Children’s movies will be playing on Sunday afternoons – please check our website.) All films are with English subtitles
LIFE ON TAPE (Bilder (m)einer Mutter)
Tuesday, January 10, 2023 – 7:00 PM
Germany 2021, 78 min
Directed by Melanie Lischker
A seemingly entirely normal childhood in the 80s captured on countless video cassettes. On them, a family in which each one plays their own role. But there’s a shadow on everyday life. With his camera, the father calmly documents how in between Christmas celebrations and school events the mother becomes more and more of a shadow of herself. At first, she disappears from the recordings, but later from the family altogether. Father, brother, and sister are left, and the family construct crumbles. With her film the director challenges her family to break their decades-long silence concerning the loss of their mother. A diary is found, as well as the father’s old super 8 recordings, in which the mother still smiled into the camera lovingly. We emerge into the life story of Gaby, who dreams of leaving the Bavarian small town and her old school parents as a teenager. Despite the revolutionary cliché of the 70s, marriage is the only logical way to independence for the couple. The climate of the time, torn between emancipation and a conservative way of thought, rubs off on the biography of the young woman. Images from society and politics show plenary chambers filled with men and planes with no female pilots in sight. Gabi struggles with the realization of her dreams while her husband lives out a successful career. The camera joins a woman on her tragic life’s path, who ultimately stumbles over her role as mother, which she never fully took on.
Filmfestival Kitzbuehel 2021
Winner Festival Prize – Best Documentary
Melanie Lischker
Here is the link to the trailer.
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