Jan Gympel | #teddyaward

Lothar Lambert celebrates his 80th birthday in July. In 1982, the Toronto Festival dedicated a retrospective to him, who had become known as an underground filmmaker in the 1970s. He used the invitation to shoot his next film during the trip – improvised as usual, with the simplest of means and a resulting rough aesthetic as well as a (partly self-ironic) mixture of reality and fiction: his regular leading actress at the time, Ulrike S., played a woman who struggles with the fact that she is mainly known for her revealing appearances with a West Berlin underground filmmaker and receives no other role offers. So she tries her luck in Toronto and New York.
Current events such as the short-term ban on the screening of the Lambert film 1 Berlin-Harlem in Toronto were incorporated into FRÄULEIN BERLIN. And various fellow directors agreed to appear in front of the camera: from Norman Jewison to Bette Gordon and Jim Jarmusch to Helke Sander. The film had its world premiere at the 1984 Berlinale (Jan Gympel).

Fräulein Berlin will be screened on July 29, 2024 at 07pm at Arsenal 1, followed by a film discussion with Lothar Lambert, moderated by Jan Gympel.