Mädchen in Wittstock (Wittstock Girls)

1974, 20 min., b/w, Documentary
Director: Volker Koepp
Cinematography: Michael Zausch
Screenplay: Volker Koepp, Richard Ritterbusch
35mm, English subtitles - renting information

Synopsis:

This is the first of a masterly chronicle of seven documentaries, made over a 23-year period. It features snapshots of three funny and sensitive young women in a small town just north of Berlin, their personal dreams and wishes, and their troubled work at the knitting factory. The latest installment of the long-term project is Wittstock, Wittstock (1997).

“An exceptional record of passing time.”
- Variety

”…Koepp understands how to make his figures – quite ordinary people – shine.”
- freedom film festival (American Cinema Foundation)

About the Director:

Volker Koepp was born in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland) in 1944 and studied at the Technical University of Dresden from 1963 to 1965. In 1966, he entered the German Academy of Film in Potsdam-Babelsberg and obtained his diploma as a writer and director in 1969. He was a director at the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films from 1970–1991 and has been a freelance director since then. In 1974, Koepp began long-term filming in Wittstock, focusing on the women workers in a textile factory. By 1997, he had made a total of seven films about Wittstock. The Wide Field (1976) was Koepp’s first film in a decades-long series of portraits showing people in historical areas. This series also includes Cold Homeland (1995), Herr Zwilling and Frau Zuckermann (1999), Uckermark (2002), and This Year in Czernowitz (2004). Koepp has directed over 50 documentaries and is one of Germany’s most internationally-celebrated documentary filmmakers.