Next week the incredible Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest returns to east London, and we’ll be publishing a handful of interviews with some of its contributors. First up – the fantastic Liz Rosenfeld, director of The Surface Tension Trilogy. The films (Frida & Anita, Höch and Die Neue Frau, 2014) explore the lives of contemporary Berliners via a backdrop of the hedonistic Weimar Republic. Each film re-imagines the lives of queer residents of the city during that period, such as the queer chanteuse Anita Berber and Frida Kahlo.

Liz has spent the past seven years working as an artist in Berlin and her work is preoccupied with “documenting elements of queer people in my life”, as well as exploring in a wider sense how LGBT history is recorded and remembered.

(above image: Die Neue Frau, Still by Alexa Vachon)

What initially inspired you to view your experiences of queer present-day Berlin through the lens of the Weimar Republic?

I moved to Berlin 7 years ago, a year after my mother passed away, with the intention of learning and understanding more about the German-Jewish side of my family. I always say that I thought I was going to find a Jewish diaspora by moving to Berlin, but instead I found an international queer diaspora, one that consists of people who moved here, like me, with a particular idea of what Berlin has been, what it is today and what it potentially can be. As I began to meet people and explore the city, I began to think about artists and queers who lived here throughout Berlin’s different eras and manifestations. As an American, I had never been so confronted with such a visible, multi-faceted historical landscape as Berlin; it is impossible to live in this city without being reminded of its recent history. The visibility of history was a huge shift for me. Construction of national identity in the United States is often predicated on the suppression or obfuscation of history – especially the history of genocide – unlike here, a city which is suffused with markers of its past.

I looked to the period of the Weimar Republic as a point of entry into exploring my present-day life and the inspirational queer artists and activists with whom I share it. I was interested in Berlin’s special mythology, the ideology and dreams that drew people to this city – and which drew me here too. Coming from a neo-liberal New York Jewish family of and descended from Germans who were lucky enough to escape during the Nazi regime, I thought of Weimar, the decadent and liberal precursor to the repressive and murderous regime which followed, as perhaps the most romanticised period in queer history – almost a cliché. When one thinks of the ‘Golden Age’ of the Weimar era, radical hedonism and independence of creativity and sexuality spring to mind. Queerness was everywhere, not just in terms of sexuality and gender identity, but in the creation of political and artistic movements, redefining what it may mean to live on the fringes of mainstream society. The idea that “anything goes” is synonymous with this period, However, the Weimar era, particularly in Berlin, was a time of extreme political instability, with the radicalization of both the left and right, with poverty and austerity. While some of the most remarkable figures and influential artistic, political and intellectual work of the twentieth century were generated during this time, it was also a period in which fascism was becoming galvanized. Fascist politics led to either the absorption or destruction of radicalism – in the case of the 1920s feminist movement, for instance, which Hitler’s National Socialism transformed through misogynist policies and the simultaneous glorification of Die Neue Frau (The New Woman,) the hard working backbone of both German homes and industry during war time.

Liz Rosenfeld, photo: Alexa Vachon

With the anachronistic elements of Frida & Anita, I transposed the Weimar Period in Berlin onto the present day, as I am interested in how such practice poses questions regarding our engagement with history and how stories are told – especially those stories that are lived, not recorded. Almost 80 years after the Weimar era, people are coming to Berlin from all over the world with dreams of moving freely through space and time, with the intention of acting radically in our own practices – but also being faced with the reality of what it means to be an artist and activist today in Europe. I do not claim to represent any specific community through this trilogy; it is really just an articulation or an imagination by a queer person living in Berlin today of a specific moment, time and place. Much like at the end of the Weimar Republic, we are contemplating impending global doom. Artists, intellectuals and activists still flock to Berlin with expectations of cheap rents, a lot of time to create, and easy living, at least by comparison to the expensive metropolises in which many of them formerly lived. However, there is so much more happening here, and in many ways, it is the artists like me who are damaging the city through the process of gentrification. In the wake of a massive global humanitarian crisis, people of non-German ethnicity who were born and have spent their entire lives in Germany are being deported back to their “countries of origin”, and asylum seekers are being turned away from one of the richest and most resource-laden countries in Europe. I often say that I don’t know if I would have applied for a German passport (I obtained dual citizenship because my Opa – my grandfather – fled during the Third Reich) if I had truly understood the immigration politics of Germany. I don’t know if I would have articulated this when I began making The Surface Tension Trilogy, but I certainly think of this film trilogy now in many ways as an examination of my own privilege, living in Berlin right now as an ex-patriot American-German Jew.

Frida & Anita, still by Christa Holka

One of the trio of films imagines a one night stand between Anita Berber and Frida Kahlo – why did you choose to focus on these two people?

Frida & Anita, the first film in the trilogy, encapsulates all the deliciously romantic clichés of Weimar, while also looking at a possible, yet unlikely, convergence between these figures. In a way, Frida & Anita it is the fantasy I have of that time: sex, politics, art, and in many ways, what I imagined my life might look like in Berlin! I was thinking about queer women during the 1920s, specifically queer female artists who were coming into their own during this time and who continued to become major pop-cultural, artistically inspirational icons later in their lives – and after their deaths. I was also interested in exploring these myth-making women when they were young, and who I felt encapsulated elements of the people who portray them in my film. I thought of Frida Kahlo during this period because she was not yet a painter, nor a full-time activist. She was a young woman, exploring her ideas and excitement for politics and art, wearing a lot of drag – Frida used to steal her father’s suits. I also started to think about what it would be like for a young Frida Kalho (whose German father was rumoured to have been Jewish) to walk around the streets of Berlin in the early 1920s, full of so much curiosity, on the verge of becoming who we know her to be today. One of my first friends in Berlin, Margarita Tsomou, a Greek immigrant, artist and activist, was very much at a similar precipice during this time: asking herself where her political work and artistic work met. I thought of her and Frida as possibly sharing a similar moment at a crossroads in their lives, where one must choose how to act radically as an artist. Anita Berber was an infamous chanteuse in Berlin during the 1920’s and also was later, after her death, hailed as one of the early visionaries of modern dance. My roommate, Richard Hancock, a dancer and performance artist, reminded me of her, as his work is similarly committed to testing time and pushing the body to its physical and emotional limits. I asked both Margarita and Richard to think about how they related to these personae, where they could locate themselves within Frida & Anita, and how they could be vessels embodying and merging with these women in time.

Höch, an imagined 1970s documentary focusing on the Dadaist Artist Hannah Höch as she reflects upon her life in 1920s Berlin, examines the “usefulness of nostalgia”. Having made these three films, how do you feel about nostalgia – can it be damaging, and when is it a positive tool?

Just before I moved to Berlin, I became particularly interested in what seemed to be a common theme for artists of my generation, particularly feminist and/or queer-identified artists, to turn to the mode of historical re-enactment in their work, to derive inspiration from historical moments in feminist or queer history.. As much as I adore the experience of being consumed by romantic nostalgia for a place and time in which I was not present, but by which I feel inspired, I began to wonder what the genesis was of longing for such a vicarious emotional experience. Perhaps we believe that during these moments, there was a different sense of the radically subversive, of emotional solidarity and potential futurity? Sometimes I think we all long to experience a time when “queerness’ was not fashionable. I think it is important to think about what we choose to feel nostalgic for, and how. In Höch, Hannah Höch, who lived and worked through the Weimar era, is skeptical of the way nostalgia is being co-opted to experience a notion of radicality, decades later. She wonders why the youth of 1970’s Berlin are so interested in feeling and trying to channel and fabricate the sense of reckless abandon they believe existed in Berlin in the 1920s. I think that looking to different forms of histories and how they are recorded (or not recorded) is more useful than simply being nostalgic, should we wish to inspire the future and to manifest political action and creativity. I think the indulgence in which nostalgia invites us to lose ourselves could be a dangerous point of stagnation and individuation. Höch takes place a year before Hannah Höch’s death, and serves as the film in the trilogy that doesn’t just rupture a sense of romantisicm and the fantastical about Berlin, but also asks the question: what is it that the youth of that time, of any time, are looking for? What do they think they can achieve by basing their dreams on a city that is continually rupturing, that is forever unfinished?

HOCH, still by nowMomentnow

In the twenty-first century, contemporary queer lives are being documented and remembered more than ever before. It what respects can improvements still be made in how our histories are being recorded, to ensure future generations understand who we were?

I think it’s a really interesting time for queer media and visibility. Of course it is amazing that issues equated with queerness, like trans identity, are being hailed and documented by mainstream media structures with much greater prevalence than before. I am at that age now where I can say to the next generation before me, “When I was your age….” and as much as I am amused by this, I am also amazed by how much in terms of language, visibility, and identity has changed for queer people since I began to articulate my own queerness in my teens. I feel that younger people are experiencing an amazing moment, utilizing technology and media to reach out, re-create language, pronouns, spaces in a very different way than when I was young. However, I think it is also potentially dangerous how integrated into capitalism (at least in the USA) queerness has become. For example I think that the legalization of gay marriage and healthcare for same-sex partners in the USA, as well as the celebrity culture around trans people was hugely influential to certain members of my family in accepting and supporting me as a queer person. One would say that is a good thing, but what angers me is that they are unable to see what is beyond this whitewashing of queerness – perhaps not my story, but the stories of so many queers who were lost in the process of historical erasure. I was lucky enough to learn about queer history from actual queers, and I hope that what continues is the notion that queer lives and queer histories – in fact, history in general – can’t be recorded in any factual way, and the history that we are taught as factual is often fiction. I can only speak to how I can improve in the way I tell stories as an artist, and for me it is as much about the process of film-making as the actual document of what is made and left behind. I made The Surface Tension Trilogy with the Berlin moving-image collective nowMomentnow, of which I have been a part for 5 years. nowMomentnow is committed to producing, creating and supporting queers and feminists who are involved in film and video and who are working at various stages of their practice – from zero budget to funded projects. A lot of our practice is based on skill-sharing and trade, helping each other figure out how we can continue to be working artists, to be recognized as laborers in an economy that supports us. It’s a life project. I hope The Surface Tension Trilogy at least instigates conversations and questions around how we can move forward in radicalizing how history is recorded.

When We Are Together We Can Be Everywhere, still by Alexa Vachon

Can you tell us a bit about how you got involved with When We Are Together We Can Be Everywhere, director Marit Östberg’s film that’s also showing at Fringe? What’s coming up for you in 2016?

Marit Östberg and I met through common friends in Berlin about four years ago, and when she learned about the work I did, she invited me to join a discussion group of women who worked in media dealing with sexuality, porn and gender. When I got to know Marit and her beautiful and inspiring work making hot queer/ feminist porn, I went to her and asked if I could be in one of her films. I wanted to have the experience, as a film director, of being directed by a filmmaker I greatly admired. Of course, I thought that I would just have a minor role, but through a series of conversations, during which we also got to know each other more intimately, Marit decided she wanted to make a documentary about me as a filmmaker – and about her as a filmmaker – incorporating elements of our fantasies of each other and of our life in Berlin. At the time, I was in the middle of working on my trilogy, and I find it interesting to see how Surface Tension and When We Are Together We Can Be Everywhere overlap thematically, even though they are very different films. Both problematize the discrepancy between romantic dreams of Berlin and the reality of living in the city today – and both simply document friends in a certain time and place, making, converging and creating together. Marit and I are both writing our own love letters to Berlin, and we both end with the question: Where do we go now in our lives, loves, and work?

I’m With You presents Liz Rosenfeld: The Surface Tension Trilogy & Q&A is showing at the Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest at the Barbican Cinema, Saturday 28th November, 3pm

When We Are Together We Can Be Everywhere is showing at the Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest at the Rose Lipman Building, Saturday 28th November, 7.30 pm