Nude Photography – e.g., Gundula Schulze

(Aktfotografie – z.B. Gundula Schulze)

GDR, 1983, 12 min, color/b&w
In German; English subtitles
Credits:
Director
Script
Camera
Music (Score)

Synopsis

In this short, East German photographer Gundula Schulze (b. 1954) vividly explains her creative process and talks about her desire to and concerns about capturing the whole personality of the women in her work. She sees her nude portraits, posed in social settings, as the antithesis of the usual, superficially erotic nude photographs. As of the late 1970s, Schulze’s innovative photo series were met with official disapproval because they captured and conveyed the loneliness, poverty and distress felt by some in East German society. This conversation with Schulze, filmed in color, is interspersed with black-and-white film clips of working women.

 

Warning: Nudity.

 

 

Awards

2022 Play Doc International Film Festival Tui, Spain
2021 Retrospective POESÍA DE LO COTIDIANO: Los primeros films de Helke Misselwitz, Mar del Plata Int. Film Festival, Argentina
2021 Retrospective Everyday Poetry: The Films of Helke Misselwitz, Anthology Film Archives, New York
2021 Sehnsüchte, International Student Film Festival
2020 Female Directors in East Germany, Dresden International Short Film Festival, Germany
2019 Self-Determined. Retrospective of Woman Filmmakers, Berlin International Film Festival, Germany
2012 Cottbus Film Festival

 

Press comments

“A vivid narration of the endeavor to fight against restrictive ideals of beauty.” —Sehnsüchte, International Student Film Festival

 

“A plea against stereotypical approaches to nude models.” —dhm.de

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