Project grants 2014

'Where the free women are' ('Wo die freien Frauen wohnen')
Applicant: Uschi Madeisky, Frankfurt
Type of project: documentary film/post production
Funding: Euro 4,000

Uschi Madeisky's documentary 'Where the free women are' ('Wo die freien Frauen wohnen') focuses on the life of the Mosuo in south-western China. In Mosuo society, economic and social life lies in the hands of its women. The Mosuo do not start new families but live together in their families of origin. Instead of traditional marriage, they practice "walking marriages" where women invite their male lovers to stay only overnight. In China, this has earned Mosuo women the reputation of leading salacious sexual lives which resulted in an increase of domestic Chinese tourism. The film addresses the question what love actually means to the Mosuo and how they reconcile their traditions with growing tourism.
maecenia will support the film's extensive post production process.

Since the mid-1990s, film producer Uschi Madeisky has focused her work on documentaries about matriarchal cultures.

'The woman with the camera' ('Die Frau mit der Kamera')
Applicant: Claudia von Alemann, Cologne
Type of project: documentary film
Funding: Euro 3,000

Since 1965, filmmaker Claudia von Alemann maintained a close personal and artistic friendship with photographer Abisag Tüllmann until her death in 1996. In 'The woman with the camera – a portrait of photographer Abisag Tüllmann' von Alemann developes a special narrative style in image and sound based on Tüllmann's photographs.
Abisag Tüllmann always had an eye for what was special and unique to the moment, regardless of whether she was working as a theatre photographer or portraitist or documenting political protest movements in Germany and abroad. Interviews with famous contemporaries whom Abisag Tüllmann had photographed at crucial moments in their lives turn the film into a living document of the times.
maecenia supports the production of an English version, a trailer and other press materials.

Claudia von Alemann is a director and producer of many documentaries and several feature films for cinema and television. Her work has won prizes at international film and video art festivals.

'I'd be music myself, if I could' ('Am liebsten wäre ich selbst Musik')
Applicant: Lilo Mangelsdorff, Frankfurt
Type of project: documentary film
Funding: Euro 4,000

This film about Darmstadt-based composer Barbara Heller, born in 1936, documents a life full of obstacles and self-doubt that is exemplary for many artists of Heller's generation. Even though she had studied music and composition she refused to call herself a composer until she discovered parallels between her own life and biographies of earlier women composers. Heller was also one of the founders of the International Working Group Women and Music, an association of composers, musicians and musicologists dedicated to the music created by women. Lilo Mangelsdorff has set herself a similar aim with this film – she wants to encourage other women musicians and composers in their work.

Lilo Mangelsdorff is a documentary film maker who focuses on cultural and social issues. She has co-founded and co-manages a production company together with Wolfgang Schemmert.

'Fragments of Freedom'
Applicant: Magda Wystub, Berlin
Type of project: documentary film
Funding: Euro 3,500

This documentary portrays three extreme climbers of different generations who in spite of outstanding achievements hardly occur in public perception. Jeanne Immink (1853–1929), 75-year-old Silvia Metzeltin and 40-year-old Silvia Vidal have each made extraordinary contributions to challenge male dominance in mountaineering. 'Fragments of Freedom' merges a wide range of footage employing several different styles. Personal stories and historical background information, anecdotes and previously unpublished documents are juxtaposed with stop-motion staged acrobatics scenes and impressive footage of a climbing expedition.

For her first film 'Yes, We Are', sociologist Magda Wystub received the Best Documentary Award at the 2012 Queer and Migrant Film Festival in Vienna.

'Handbag-sized films' ('Film im Handtaschenformat')
Applicant: Heide Schlüpmann, Kinothek Asta Nielsen, Frankfurt
Type of project: film festival
Funding: Euro 3,500

For over three years, Kinothek Asta Nielsen in Frankfurt am Main has been collecting, cataloguing, making accessible and presenting home movies. To this day, home movies remain largely uncharted territory to film curators. The festival will present the cinematheque's 'Home Movies by Women' project to the public and functions as a networking event. In addition to simple viewing pleasure, it will provide historical and social insights and show how the genre of home movies frequently slips into the domain of artistic films such as diary films, for example.

Professor and film theorist Heide Schlüpmann is co-founder of Kinothek Asta Nielsen in Frankfurt. The cinematheque wants to write film history by presenting film programmes, while theoretically and practically picking up "loose ends" of recent feminist film work.

'Ofrenda III – the sacrifice for money. A pilgrimage from Zurich to Frankfurt am Main' ('Ofrenda III – das Allerheiligste auf den Spuren des GELDES. Eine Pilgerreise von Zürich nach Frankfurt am Main')
Applicant: Anna Poetter, Weisendorf
Type of project: pilgrimage and exhibition
Funding: Euro 4,000

Ofrenda III is the last part in a trilogy of campaigns in which artist Anna Poetter sets out to question key values of modern Western society.
Dressed in pilgrim's garb, she will travel through places closely related to the history of money – from Zurich to Frankfurt am Main via Munich, Augsburg, Nuremberg and Würzburg. In an ironic and exaggerated approach, she will perform ritual acts and conduct money-related interviews with experts from the financial and economic world.
Video artist Katrin Kaa Riedl will film Poetter at crucial stations of the journey and develop a separate work on the subject from the footage. The resulting film, along with Poetter's travel diary and the interviews will be published online and presented in a joint exhibition.

Anna Poetter was born in 1974 and trained as an actress. She creates location-related performances incorporating elements of installation art. Her work could be described as "live art" or "theatrical art".

'Montserrat'
Applicant: Wanda Pratschke, Frankfurt
Type of project: plaster model for bronze casting
Funding: Euro 2,000

Wanda Pratschke has been working as a sculptor in Frankfurt for 35 years and sculptures of hers are presented in several public places around the city. Her work revolves around the theme of the female body. Yet, she is not after timelessness, beauty or ideals, as one might expect. Rather, she is interested in form-finding, weight distribution and the relationship to space. On the occasion of her 75th birthday in February 2014, an exhibition will be held at the Carmelite monastery in Frankfurt, for which Pratschke will create a new sculpture named 'Montserrat' (170 × 65 × 55 cm). The sculpture will emerge from plaster which allows the artist to create a lively surface by adding and removing layers and by pushing the malleable material into shape. The plaster model will be cast in bronze in 2014.

'Feminisms in action – a history of protest and resistance actions from early tomato throws to present-day slutwalks' ('Feminismen in Aktion! Eine Protest- und Widerstandsgeschichte von den Tomatenwürfen bis zu den Slutwalks')
Applicant: Dr Christiane Leidinger, Berlin
Type of project: book
Funding: Euro 2,000

Christiane Leidinger is looking into forms of political campaign employed by women's movements in Germany from 1968 to the present day. Leidinger wants to categorise and analyse these forms of protest (occupation, demonstration, sabotage, strike, street theatre etc.) which she has been researching from archives and other sources. She will employ existing forms of systematisation applied to social movements which she will put to critical scrutiny in the process. Leidinger's work will also focus on the tremendous bandwidth of these acts of protest and other direct forms of political action, on which there has hardly been any scientific research.

Dr Christiane Leidinger is a freelance political scientist and author. She lives in Berlin, working as a university lecturer. She has been actively involved in political educational work since 1996.