Film

Film or tits?

OUT SOON! Isabell Šuba's MÄNNER ZEIGEN FILME & FRAUEN IHRE BRÜSTE is a poignantly painful mockumentary on misogyny in the film industry.

When Isabell Šuba, recent directorial graduate of the Potsdam Film School, was invited to Cannes in 2012 to present her short film, her reaction was go proactive on the issue of male dominance in the film business: she gave her accreditation to actress Anna Haug who plays Šuba (under Šuba’s direction), as she touts the pitch for her first full length film around a blatantly misogynist film industry.

Along for the ride through this poignantly painful mockumentary is Šuba’s well-meaning but somewhat lackadaisical producer and friend David Wendlandt (played by Matthias Weidenhöfer). As the couple crash their way around Cannes, missing appointments, and fudging those that they do make, the exercise also turns into a friendship make-or-breaker. If Šuba’s film has a (slight) weakness, it’s the way Wendlandt’s character over re-iterates the trope of general male ineptitude: his clumsy designation of lesbian sex as “Dose auf Dose” is a bit much – and not only for Šuba. Which enlightened man, under 40, in the entertainment industry, still talks like this?

Mostly though, Šuba gets it absolutely right by extending the brief of her film into the personal. The oversexed atmosphere of a film festival is neatly captured in a scene in which both Šuba and her producer hit on the same poolside Texan babe. And Šuba is not above exploiting her own connections – as she asks a former lover and actress to help open a couple of doors.

Sure artistry, especially in the film business, is about merchandising – as evidenced by the open letter published by La Barbe (The Beard), the French feminist collective, in Le Monde in May of 2012, addressing the complete absence of female directors in that year’s Cannes film selection. But the product that you’re selling grows on creative soil: by choosing the infertile plains of male dominion as a breeding ground for her first feature, Šuba neatly undercuts and exploits that trope as the backdrop to her creative process. Not a bad deal at all.

Männer zeigen Filme und Frauen ihre Brüste will be presented by Šuba and her team for its German premiere at 8pm on August 14 at the Hackesche Höfe Kino before setting off on a nationwide tour (including more Berlin screenings on August 18, 7pm at Sputnik, August 19, 9pm at Freilufttkino im Cassiopeia, August 28, 9pm at Freiluftkino Pompeji and September 6, 8pm at Lichtblick).

Post-screening contentiousness welcome.