Director: Riki Kalbe
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Biography: Riki Kalbe (born September 20, 1941 in Wuppertal, died January 2, 2002 in Berlin) was a filmmaker and photographer. She loved concrete things, discovering metaphorical universes in them, she invented the feminist hacker, anticipating reality, she researched ordinary stories and dedicated herself to hidden memory, always pursuing the question of how memory is possible at all. Between 1976 and 1998 she shot 15 films, some of them in collaboration with Barbara Kasper and others. In 2006 her films were shown at Arsenal cinema on the occasion of an exhibition of her photographs. She had spent a great deal of time there, both as spectator and as filmmaker. In the sensitive way that she brought things together and her excitement for ideas, she also functioned as a programmer. To express her long-term association with the Arsenal, she left her entire body of filmic work to the archive there. Her photographic estate is held at the Akademie der Künste.
Riki Kalbe was a collector of stories and pictures. She was connected by friendship with many people who lived and worked in Berlin (East and West) and elsewhere. She supported her friends in many respects, for instance, by generously sharing in their ideas and projects. This DVD is meant to make her films available to a wider audience.
Riki Kalbe was a person with a big heart, who could be passionate and restless, but also searching and vulnerable, someone who listened first and spoke afterwards, and, perhaps unintentionally, had an infectious effect with her ideas. Riki was a master at researching and not-letting-up. She never kept her excitement to herself, the fire got to you, the spark was smouldering, and before you knew it you were pulled into her stories.
(Lothar Heinke, “Obituary for Riki Kalbe,” Der Tagesspiegel February 8, 2002)
Country: West Germany
Year: 1977
Synopsis: The initial idea was to make a children’s film about chocolate-covered marshmallows. How they are made, what they are made of, where they are made, who manufactures them under what conditions. The women who work on the assembly line are happy to tell us all about themselves. We are a welcome diversion. We noticed that the men have the better jobs and also earn more money. The women don’t entirely let themselves be taken in by the meritocracy. Talking, goofing off, and singing, they help each other to get through their 8-hour day. We like that. We drop the idea of a children’s film. In this film we tried out a documentary film form that deliberately does without interviews, relying instead largely on the effect of the images. (dffb information material)
From today's perspective the film also offers a glimpse into the history of migration in West Germany.
Language: German
