1 y r a An Interview with Iris Gusner about All My Girls r b i L m l From 1960 to 1967 you studied at the renowned VGIK film academy in Moscow. One of your teachers was i F 1 2 A Mikhail Romm. In your book Fantasie und Arbeit, which you wrote with Helke Sander, you vividly describe F E D several experiences you had with Romm. To what extent did Romm and your studies in Moscow influence e h t you as a filmmaker? y b e s a e In the 1960s, when I studied at VGIK, an ideological “thaw” in the Soviet Union was taking place, which had l e R been initiated by Nikita Krushchev. It was a time of upheaval and re-evaluation, a type of brief and cautious D V D anticipation of Gorbatchev’s Glasnost and Perestroika, which is still referred to as “the happy 60s” among A • Soviet artists and intellectuals. s l r i G This short decade of relative freedom gave Soviet filmmaking so much creative impetus that it regained inter - y M l national respect and won awards at the big festivals around the world—with films like Ballad of the Soldier by l A • Grigory Chukhrai, The Cranes Are Flying by Mikhail Kalatozov, Nine Days of One Year by Mikhail Romm, Ivan’s s l r i Childhood by Andrei Tarkovsky, The First Teacher by Andrei Konchalovski, Ordinary Fascism by Mikhail Romm, G y M to name but a few. And the creators of these films were our teachers or had studied at VGIK before us. We had l l A living role models! t u o b a We students who studied during this “window of time” had the opportunity to critically confront both contem - r e n s porary themes and the traditional forms and expressive vehicles of film. Of course, all students in all eras have u G s the urge to change the world and put everything “old” into question; but the climate of this period in Moscow i r I h t and at that school was propitious for such questioning, and our training sent us into our professional lives with, i w in addition to a solid mastery of craftsmanship, the energy and the courage to get involved and take a position. w e i v r e At that time, I felt everything was possible... Even though it turned out to be a delusion later on, I have never t n I lost this energy or courage. n A VGIK was an international school. So many nations, both belonging to and outside of the Soviet Union, studied, lived and worked in that tight space together! The “exoticism” of their personalities and backgrounds, their stories and the story of their countries, their expectations for the future expanded our horizons and our under - standing of the world. I consider this the second greatest gift “for my whole life” that the Moscow film academy gave me. Were Italian neorealist films, or those of the French Nouvelle Vague also available to you? If so, do you see your films in the tradition of these periods of film history? The influence of Italian neo-realism on my generation was very strong because we ourselves had the need to tell real-life stories that reflected our own experiences, about people we knew, and all as realistically as possible. So: out of the studio and the artificial world, out into natural interiors and onto the streets…. Had there been no Italian neo-realism, it would have nevertheless emerged in some other place. It was not imitation; rather, it met a general need of our time, as did the Nouvelle Vague , which continued in the same direction. All My Girls A film by Iris Gusner 2 y What influence did Czech and Polish films have on you? r a r b i L I always liked Polish cinema, especially because it was thematically and politically more courageous than ours m l i F in the GDR. But it was not transferable. My concrete connection to it was established through its actors; in A F three of my films, Polish actors play the lead. They brought their somewhat different approach and vibes into E D e h the German acting ensemble and thus expanded and enriched the small world of my films. t y b e Unfortunately, the Czech films mostly passed me by—either because I had no opportunity to see them, or s a e l because they didn’t speak to me. After the suppression of the Prague Spring of 1968, the best Czech directors e R D left for the West or stayed home and had to make even more conventional films than we did in the GDR. V D A • s l You joined the DEFA Feature Film Studio in the early 1970s. When you had your debut at the studio with your r i G 3 film Die Taube auf dem Dach (The Dove on the Roof , 1973/2010), you were one of very few female directors. y M l How was the atmosphere in the studio with respect to female colleagues and, especially, female directors? l A • s l Back then I was so convinced of my equal rights as a woman—and thus as a director—that I never gave it a r i G thought. And DEFA management always treated me fairly and equitably, as did my colleagues. The differences y M l that my position as a woman did entail—namely, the double burden of career and childrearing, housekeeping l A t u and other smaller issues—these differences and inequalities I only grasped much later. o b a r e You also wrote the scenario and script for your first films, The Dove on the Roof and Einer muss die Leiche n s u G sein (Someone Must Be the Corpse) . Later on others wrote your scenarios, then you did it again. How did this s i r I changing “division of labor” play out in terms of the creation of the films? h t i w Not much, because I adapted the two scenarios that were offered to me— Das blaue Licht (The Blue Light) and w e i v Im Gegenlicht (In Back Light) , which I later re-named Alle meine Mädchen (All My Girls) . If this had not been r e t n I possible—if I hadn’t been able to relate to the themes, or if the author had not allowed my intervention into his n or her text—I would not have made these two movies. A After my first film, The Dove on the Roof , was banned, my second film was cancelled a month before shooting began. The studio management then asked me to make the fairy-tale film The Blue Light —in other words, something absolutely “unthreatening”—to show that I was good at my job. In the meantime, rumors were circulating that I was incapable of making a film, something that people liked to believe about novice directors, especially a woman novice. For this reason, I agreed. The characters in the scenario fulfilled the usual clichés: the king was rich and cruel, the princess sophisticated , vain and arrogant; they lived in an amazing palace, repressed the poor and ate off golden plates.... I was of the opinion that children do not yet live in a world stratified by class, but rather in a single, whole world, where the “good” people are those who are friendly and the “bad” people are those who are not. Thus, my king is not especially rich. He lives in a sort of big manor, where things are rural and earthy, loud and chaotic. He is not cruel, but rather a crass man who angers easily. The princess is not sophisticated and vain, but rather a brat—a child reared by anti-authoritarians—who is allowed to do everything children want to do: splash their hands in their soup, kick the babysitter, suck their thumbs…. And I got it right: children adored the princess (played by the young Katharina Thalbach) and, because many children knew angry fathers and adults, the king too resembled their experience—because for children rage is “evil,” because it’s frightening. So the young viewers could have some fun, I wrote the figure of the robber with the stolen cannon into the story and All My Girls A film by Iris Gusner 3 y more things like that. And I tried throughout to tell the story in a simple manner with a twinkle in the eye. r a r b i L This is an example of what I mean when I talk about adapting material written by someone else. I think that’s m l i F how directors work, more or less, who do not simply see themselves as executives. A F E D e h Most of your films have a female protagonist at their core, all very different women with different social t y b backgrounds. Your characters are depicted with a great deal of feeling and detail. Where did your inspiration e s a e for these figures come from? l e R D Basically I could build on my own observations and experiences as a woman. Through my profession, I came V D A together with people of different social classes, including at the studio: the DEFA Feature Film Studio had 2,000 • s l full-time employees! The artistic professions—directors, cinematographers, film editors, set and costume r i G designers, make-up artists, authors and editors (which we called dramaturgs), musicians in the studio orchestra, y M l etc.—only made up a small percentage of the total.