Shot whilst she was a student at the DFFB and collaborating with women who lived and worked within the Märkisches Viertel, a housing estate in the North-West of Berlin, Cristina Perincioli constructs the story of four women who work in a supermarket. After discovering the pay imbalance between them and their male colleagues, the women decide to go on strike. Fiction staged from reality, Für Frauen. 1. Kapitel offers a still blistering example of collectively made and politically engaged cinema.

“This is the basis for every other type of social oppression of women. In this fifilm, we see the interpersonal problems women must resolve among themselves before they can act together against the boss. Following this realisation, we women wrote this fifilm together and made it ourselves. That was a lot of fun. Our realisations in the process were: We don’t need liberal filmmakers to take on the subject of emancipation. We demand that the means of production be in our hands!” (Cristina Perincioli)

Cristina Perincioli collaborated with women from the first women’s shelter in Germany to stage and examine their experiences escaping violence in their relationships. Alternating between restaged events and discussion between the women, Perincioli gives space for the processing of trauma through dialogue, making visible the often hidden realities of domestic violence.

“I have constructed narratives to awaken the viewer’s emotions, feelings of anger and joy. These emotions have a power that can be tapped and directed so that people become actively involved in changing themselves or their world. My films’ upbeat endings represent the collective wish of those involved to show that things can work out. It’s not to give directions for a mass movement nor establish models but rather to create an atmosphere of hope and courage.” (Cristina Perincioli)