Rebellinnen - Fotografie. Underground. DDR

Summary

Documentary about the artists Tina Bara, Cornelia Schleime and Gabriele Stötzer, who were active in the underground art scene of the GDR in the 1970s and 80s. They lived in East Berlin, Erfurt and Dresden, and countered the images of state propaganda with an alternative and intimate perspective. They were soon targeted by the Stasi, shadowed, put under massive pressure, and in some cases sentenced to prison for "defamation of the state." In 1984, Cornelia Schleime had to leave the GDR head over heels; Tina Bara was able to leave in 1989 because she married a West German man. But the change from East to West was much more difficult for her than she initially acknowledged. Gabriele Stötzer stayed in the GDR to "continue the struggle" there. In the early 1990s, she learned from her Stasi file which friends and companions had spied on and betrayed her. The film describes the lives of the three women and shows how much the past and what they experienced have shaped them and their work to this day.