A feminist remake of the 1930-Berlin set silent classic People On Sunday is being developed by German director Alice Agneskirchner, whose documentary Come With Me To The Cinema is screening in Berlinale Forum Special.
People On Sunday brought together Robert Siodmak, Edgar Ulmer, Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann early in their careers and is seen as a key work in the development of their careers.
The film showed a group of young Berliners enjoying themselves in the city on a typical Sunday. However, as underlined in Agneskirchner’s Come With Me To The Cinema, it is also seen as a profoundly chauvinistic film.
It was at a screening of People On Sunday in the 1950s that legendary Berlinale programmers Erika and Ulrich Gregor (who founded the Berlinale Forum and who have now been married for more than 60 years) had one of their very first meetings. Ulrich was a fan of the film but Erika “thought it was no good.” She thoroughly disapproved of the way the women in the film were depicted and made very clear to others that she was outraged and disgusted by its misogyny.
The Gregors are the subject of Come With Me To The Cinemas and were in attendance at its premiere this weekend. The film features contributions from many of their admirers, among them Jim Jarmusch, Volker Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders and Edgar Reitz.
The new film will be produced by Ehlermann & Agneskirchner Filmproduktion, the company the director founded with Sandra Ehlermann to produce Come With Me To The Cinema. The idea is to have four or five different crews following four different couples in Berlin. “I want to have a new approach,” Agneskirchner said of the project. It will still include romance and high jinks in the park but the stories will not be seen from a voyeuristic male perspective.
Come With Me To The Cinema will also receive a theatrical release in Germany through Cologne-based Real Fiction Filmverleih.
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