This might be the first truly avant-garde film I've ever seen. I can't say that I necessarily enjoyed the experience, but according to my professor, that's not the filmmaker's intention anyway.Edda (Helke Sander, who also wrote and directed) is a single mother in West Berlin trying to also make it as a freelance photographer. She is involved in a women's photography group who have been commissioned to put together an exhibit on working, emancipated, happy women to highlight "women's issues" but the photographers want to do an exhibit on the Berlin Wall and how social and political institutions are also women's issues.
It is intentionally shot in black and white in a documentary style, with long takes of the wall and the city, interspersed with the daily tasks of a working mother. Compared to 90% of the other movies I've ever seen, it is excruciatingly boring.
And yet (she said, triumphantly).
This is the most accurate portrayal of a working mother that is not a documentary that I have ever seen. Sander provides a voiceover for parts of the film, not necessarily directly connected to what is being shown, but providing a wry irony. Let me explain with a scene. In a voiceover, Sander describes the Secretary General of the UN releasing a message to go out with Voyager I into deep space, proclaiming to any listening aliens that the human race extends nothing but peace and brotherhood to them, while her character drives through a city at the epicenter of a decades-long cold war between rival superpowers.
So I can't really recommend it for casual viewers. Hell, I don't think I'd ever watch it again. But as a representation of feminist film, German film, and experimental film, it is top-notch.
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