Arsenal on Location: Claudia von Alemann
10/11/2025 – 10/12/2025

The Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art and the Deutsche Kinemathek present four newly restored films by author, producer, documentary and feature film director Claudia von Alemann.

Claudia von Alemann is one of the most prominent figures of feminist filmmaking. In 1973, she organised the First International Women’s Film Seminar in West Berlin’s Kino Arsenal together with film director Helke Sander. A former professor at the University of Applied Sciences Dortmund, her oeuvre encompasses experimental and documentary work as well as feature films. In complex filmic collages that juxtapose music, sound, visual art and photography, she illuminates historiography’s blind spots.

Welcome: Helke Misselwitz (Director of the Film and Media Arts Section, film director), Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (Director of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art), Heleen Gerritsen (Deutsche Kinemathek)

Introduction to the restoration process: Markus Ruff (Arsenal)

Kathleen und Eldridge Cleaver in Algier, FRG, 1970, 26 min, Original English version with German subtitles

In January 1970, Claudia von Alemann filmed the co-founders of the Black Panther Party, Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver, who had been living in exile in Algiers since 1969. In two statements, they formulate their demands for the liberation of their fellow combatants, Ericka Huggins and Bobby Seale, who were accused of the murder of an alleged informant.

Das ist nur der Anfang, der Kampf geht weiter (This is only the beginning, the struggle continues), FRG, 1969, 45 min.

May 1968, Paris, France. Eight million French workers are on strike. Police officers storm the barricades, while students protest at the Sorbonne, occupy the university and force it to open its doors to the social battles and debates challenging conventional institutions. What is the role of film in all this? What role can play in this movement? How do filmmakers organise within the framework of a cultural politics that needs to be redefined? How do they translate their demands into the filmic practice? Film students, secondary school pupils, workers from the Citroën plant and from other factories as well as established film directors, including Jean-Luc Godard, are documented taking part in the debates and altercations that took place within the film collectives formed in May 1968.

Followed by a talk with Claudia von Alemann, moderated by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus

Es kommt drauf an, sie zu verändern (The point … is to change it), FRG, 1973, 54 min.

A fierce documentary film about the work of women in the metal and electronics industry: the film shows women’s economic exploitation as well as their oppression by society at large and their failure to self-organise. It could only be shot in the factories because the director pretended to be promoting a positive image of the female metal worker’s profession. Claudia Alemann’s film contrasts the marginalisation of these women and their apparent passivity with processes of building solidarity and finding opportunities for taking action; the women are given a platform to speak and actively fight back. In the 1970s, the film was often screened in the context of political labour advocacy struggles. Quoted in the title, Karl Marx’s eleventh thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach is put into practice: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”

Followed by a talk with Claudia von Alemann, moderated by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus

Welcome: Cornelia Klauß (Film and Media Arts Section)

Introduction to the restoration process: Elisa Jochum (Deutsche Kinemathek)

Nebelland (Land of fog), Feature film, FRG, 1982, 94 min.

Written / directed / produced by Claudia von Alemann; DoP: Dieter Vervuurt; Cast: Brigitte Röttgers, Grant Johnson, Eos Schopohl, Matthias Beltz, Jean Badin, Dénise Péron

Hannah, a 37-year-old archaeological illustrator, lives in an empty five-bedroom apartment in Frankfurt am Main. She falls in love with a visiting American college professor. Her school friend Therese comes to visit with her French companion Victor, who calls himself a professional “flaneur”. And then there’s Alfred, who has the thankless job of always being there for Hannah while he is unhappily in love with her. Five people in one city, different ways of living and loving, different views on how to suppress the past or integrate the past into their present lives. But they all share one longing: "There must be more to life than just to live it."

Followed by a talk with Claudia von Alemann, moderated by Heleen Gerritsen