Katharina Voß
Janin Afken

Subject Spaces – A Lesbian Production Capsule: Pelze Multimedia, West Berlin 1981– 1996 (2020, 28 Min.)

“Pelze Multimedia” was a space for women* and lesbians* in an initially squatted building at Potsdamer Straße 139 in the West Berlin district of Schöneberg. It was there from 1981 until 1996, serving as a venue for exhibitions, concerts and parties, but especially as a free zone where lesbian* identity and sexuality could be articulated with radical openness and affirmation. Since then, it has fallen largely into oblivion.

In their film “Subject Spaces”, Katharina Voß and Janin Afken remember this place where women* were able to put social norms behind them with relish and where everyone could define for themselves what it meant to be female*. Interviews with three of the leading figures, Roswitha Baumeister, Ursula Bierther and Mahide Lein, demonstrate how “Pelze Multimedia” played a special role, even within the women’s movement of the time, by opening up to different lifestyles and formats.

The filmmakers bring great sensitivity and respect to portraying the activists, whose commitment created a significant safe space for many women* and made a major contribution to West Berlin’s subculture. Yet disputes within feminist discurses also become evident. One of the aspects implicitly addressed by the film is the exclusion of trans* people within the women’s movement at the time. It is important for Voß and Afken to show, for example through their choice of archive material, that not only their interviewees necessarily take a partial view, blanking out numerous other perspectives and experiences. The same, the filmmakers suggest, could be claimed about them. The purpose of this film, then, is not to tell the one story of this space, but also to indicate how any narrative is bound to be subjective.