Germany has produced many famous women in the entire genre, may it be art and literature, struggle for freedom, painting, film making, politics, top executive positions in organizations and so on. My goal in this paper is to describe one of the famous women from 1940’s to 1950’s.
Margarethe von Trotta, considered as the “world’s leading feminist filmmaker”, and the most supreme film directors from the Europe continent, was born on 21st February 1942 in Berlin. She is one of the most eminent female directors to arise from the New German Cinema movement. She started her film career as a small time actress when the New German Cinema started, and she was a huge follower of Alfred Hitchcock and the French Nouvelle Vagu. She got inspired to be a director after watching Alfred Hitchcock movies. With this vision in mind she got into acting, though her goal in life was to be a director, however, according to Trotta, to be woman director in that decade was not of great consideration, and with her talent and a vision to make more feminine movies, she went ahead and co-directed her first movie; The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, with Schlondorff in 1975. Trotta’s films presented tough female central characters, and many of her movies had a strong radical background. Her stories deal with people who are prisoners of social constraint, their social and personal relationships and needs, and not least their own personality, her films have often been called ‘prison films’ as said by (Hehr, 2000).
In 1977, Trotta’s first film; The Second Awakening of Christa Klages, written and directed by her brought together the subjects of female closeness, and the practices and effects of violence that she made a practice to portray in her later films. Margarethe von Trotta also brought a revolution as an opera director, and her interpretation of Alban Berg’s Lulu in Stuttgart was very much admired. She has also directed a few well known TV movies like Waterkind, Tatort, and Die Schwester.
Before starting a career as a filmmaker, Trotta studied business and worked for a couple of years at an office. Trotta was married to director Volker Schlondorff. They made a good pair as directors, however Trotta was not satisfied by the secondary reputation, and hence this mental approach made her to move on and make a solo career for herself and become “Germany’s foremost female film director, and make a history in creating women centric movies. She gained international feat in 1981 when her movie Die bleierne Zeit (The German Sisters or Marianne and Juliane) won her the maximum movie awards. Some of the famous movies directed by her are Rosa Luxemburg, Heller Wahn, Felix, Rosenstrasse and many more. Trotta presently lives in Paris, and her contribution to the high-quality cinema for over 20 years is nothing less than marvelous.
Works Cited
Hehr, Renate, (2000), Margarethe von Trotta: Filmmaking as Liberation
