Als Susan Sontag im Publikum saß

English

WHEN SUSAN SONTAG WAS SITTING IN THE AUDIENCE

It’s been 50 years since the infamous panel discussion »A Dialogue on Women‘s Liberation« took place in New York‘s Town Hall: Norman Mailer, author of The Prisoner of Sex (1971), invited the feminist advocates Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, Jacqueline Ceballos and Diana Trilling to argue, laugh and perform with him on stage. In the audience, not holding back with their criticism of Norman Mailer and his role, feminist icons such as Susan Sontag, Cynthia Ozick and Betty Friedan and the intellectual elite of New York.

50 years later in Berlin, Saralisa Volm and RP Kahl, as Germaine Greer and Norman Mailer, fight against and with each other in a reenactment for the theatre stage with Luise Helm, Heike Melba-Fendel and Celine Yildirim and continue the discussion together backstage. The rehearsals and the reflection on their own role in the reenactment and in their own lives condense into a profound exchange about feminism in the here and now.

A playful semi-documentary piece about enactment and self-staging, the beginnings of a new feminism and its reverberations in our time, or rather the differently judged question of what still needs to be done.

RP Kahl’s When Susan Sontag was Sitting in the Audience, 2022, 86 min

with Saralisa Volm, Luise Helm, Heike-Melba Fendel, Celine Yildirim, RP Kahl
and Cynthia Buchheim, Stefanie Schuster, Mario Mentrup, Kirstin Warnke, Sonja Hilberger

Studio RPK, Cornelsen Films, Independent Partners Film in cooperation with
Chappalingo Films, Film und Mehr, Kunstverein Hamburg, Ballhaus Ost Berlin

Script – Saralisa Volm, RP Kahl
Producer – RP Kahl, Christopher Cornelsen, Torsten Neumann
Co-Producer – Christoph Gampl, Angela Schmitt-Gläser
DOP – Christoph Gampl, Elena Friedrich, Markus Hirner
Sound Design + Mix – Jürgen Schulz
Editing – Angelo Wemmje