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Women still have a hard time gaining a foothold in the film industry, particularly in Africa. One who has not allowed herself to be dismayed is filmmaker Taghreed Elsanhouri. In Johannesburg, she met with her colleague, the cultural scientist Christina von Braun. They spoke about women and films.

Ms Elsanhouri, Ms von Braun, the gender perspective plays an important role in your work. Would you call yourselves feminists?

Elsanhouri: Only in private.

Von Braun: Of course I’m a feminist. The word is almost only used in public in a defamatory way. That’s all the more reason to subscribe to it.

Elsanhouri: To label myself a feminist would be counter-productive. We, I mean my generation of women between twenty and forty years old, are thankful today for all that women achieved in the 1970s. But, in our everyday lives we’ve learned that we have to act more strategically to get from point A to point B. In addition, for me as a black woman, race is just as important as gender.

Ms von Braun, nowadays younger women in particular often deny the feminist movement as a reference to their own emancipation. Does that bother you?

Von Braun: Bother me? I don’t know. If women can’t relate to feminism, that’s their prerogative. It doesn’t bother me. But, unfortunately secret feminists actually underscore the defamatory attributions of feminism. We shouldn’t take part in this degrading discourse, and that in no way means that we should therefore be uncritical of the women’s movements and the various types of feminism. Yet, I can, of course, understand that it is different for a woman from Sudan than it is for me.

Elsanhouri: Perhaps it’s time we rehabilitated the word. At present it’s just as frowned upon to call oneself a feminist as to say, “I’m a Communist.”

Von Braun: We should never forget that the first women’s movement, the Suffragettes, were instrumentalized by the colonial rulers, male and female, to undercut Egyptian society. The same people who advocated unveiling and “modernization” of women in Egypt fought against women’s voting rights in Great Britain. Hence, it’s not surprising that African societies consider feminism a western import and it therefore has such a bad reputation.

Elsanhouri: I’d like to tell you a story. While I was travelling in the south of Sudan, I met some nomad women for the first time that had never been to school. It really shocked me. I thought then, my goodness they can’t even write! I also wondered to myself, what is my responsibility here? The thought also dawned on me for the first time that perhaps this is the way white women felt when they first encountered us. Perhaps they felt just as overtaxed and full of pity as I did in this situation. Perhaps they also wanted to help, but had no idea how.

Ms von Braun, one of your academic interests is the genealogy of cinema and the related viewpoint regimes. Can you explain these terms to us?

Von Braun: Every new media technology has been accompanied by a change in the order of the sexes, regardless of whether we’re talking about the invention of the alphabet, of the printing press or the invention of cinema at the end of the 19th century. Photography and subsequently the cinema took up the viewpoint regime of central perspective and, in simple terms, define seeing as masculine and being seen as feminine. Yet, these visual techniques are western inventions, making this viewpoint regime a genuinely western one as well. Elsewhere, these techniques may have a different effect.

Elsanhouri: Without doubt there are cultural differences when it comes to viewpoints. The western viewpoint is very direct. Here, by contrast, women and men usually avoid open eye contact. In this respect, I always find it fascinating when a protagonist looks at me boldly or gazes directly into the camera.

Why?

Elsanhouri: It may just be curiosity, because the person is not as familiar with the visual media. Nonetheless, it always is somewhat radical and confronting when someone does not avoid the gaze of the camera, but confronts it openly.

Von Braun: Does this mean that in a culture that avoids the direct gaze, dialogue with the eyes, directly gazing into the camera is a subversion of one’s own culture?

Elsanhouri: Perhaps, yes.

Ms Elsanhouri, in your mid-twenties you returned to your parent’s homeland and made your first documentary in 2006, All About Darfur. What, for you, is your “own culture?”

Elsanhouri: I do not have any “own” culture. I live in a state of continuous psychological tension. I found that burdening as a young person. Today, I experience it as a source of creativity.

Von Braun: In a culture that avoids direct eye contact, what is it like to be a woman holding a camera and filming? Isn’t it almost obscene?

Elsanhouri: In some aspects it is at least brutish. But, it is very important for me. Essentially, I demand open eye contact. Maybe it has something to do with my western education. Maybe I’m too hard on my culture. I don’t think I ought to apologize just because I demand something.

Von Braun: But couldn’t the avoidance of eye contact between genders also be a sign of respect?

Elsanhouri: It is also a matter of respect, but it’s a two-edged matter. I interpret men looking away mainly as a lack of awareness for me. As if they don’t believe that I could understand their words and ideas.

Accordingly, does the camera help gain you more respect as a woman?

Elsanhouri: Definitely. The camera is under my control, I ask the questions, you cannot simply ignore me. For me, looking away is a metaphor of the majority of people in Sudan no longer wanting to face up to reality. They want to look away. They don’t want to take on responsibility. This makes me very angry. But the camera, my camera, confronts the people with their looking away and it adamantly demands their attention, also and maybe in particular their attention for themselves. When I speak in front of the camera I always am required to think about my words. It demands self-reflexion of both, the filmmaker and the dialogue partner.

The interview was held by Ines Kappert