previously published on Cineuropa
It seems that, with the current state of things in
global economics and politics, some of the heroes of the past are
being systematically forgotten, and some of the rights and liberties
they worked so hard to attain for the people have to be defended –
or even fought for – again and again. One of these heroes was late
Austrian politician Johanna Dohnal, a socialist and
a feminist whose work in the fields of women's and labour rights
stretched beyond a strictly national context. The documentary Johanna
Dohnal - Visionary of Feminism, directed by Sabine
Derflinger (known for docs such as One Out of 8 and
Hot Spot, as well as the fiction features Day and Night
and Anna Fucking Molnar), which puts the iconic politician
firmly in the spotlight, recently premiered at the Viennale.
The strictly Austrian scope of the documentary
offers little chance of a wider international release, even though a
number of parallels can be drawn with contemporary trends and social
issues in the whole of Europe. However, its TV-friendliness and the
clarity of Derflinger's storytelling might pave the way for a decent
performance in this kind of market.
From 1979-1995, Dohnal occupied two different
offices within the Austrian government: first as State Secretary for
Women's Rights and Issues, and from 1990, as Minister for Women.
During that period, she fought for the redefinition of gender roles
(striving to offer other career options for women as well as
introducing parental leave for men), granting maternity leave and
guaranteeing pension rights for female farmers, establishing shelters
for women and children who had been victims of domestic abuse, and
making marital rape legally equivalent to extra-marital rape. She
fought hard for gender quotas and saw them as a tool to enable women
to be represented in a political landscape dominated by male
representatives and officials, rather than as a goal, per se. Aside
from being a feminist, she was also a committed socialist who came
from a working-class background and knew the life of working women
only too well. In her politics, labour rights were tightly connected
to women's issues, and she saw economic dependence as one of the
principal tools of oppression.
Derflinger examines Dohnal's influence on her
immediate environment, portrayed through the testimonies of her
widow/domestic partner Annemarie Aufreiter, her
daughter Ingrid Dohnal, her granddaughter
Johanna-Helen Dohnal, public figures (such as
various artists, performers, journalists and contemporary feminists)
and society as a whole. The filmmaker also tracks the politician's
career, covering its rise during the times of Bruno Kreisky's tenure
and its fall during the era of Franz Vranitzky, when Dohnal fell
victim to different political pressures and to the global adoption of
the neo-liberal model, even within the ranks of leftist political
parties.
Over the course of the movie, Derflinger makes use
of the usual, tried-and-tested methods from the arsenal of
documentary filmmaking, such as talking-heads interviews with the
subjects conducted in their home or work environments, and archive TV
material in which Dohnal has to defend her political agenda, which
she does eloquently and passionately. The most poignant moments are
the excerpts from Dohnal's personal diary, with which Derflinger
opens and closes the film. The steady camerawork by Christine
A Maier and Eva Testor and the precise
editing courtesy of Niki Mossböck suit the material
well, which makes Johanna Dohnal - Visionary of Feminism
easy to watch and to follow – and this is very necessary for such
an informative and socially charged documentary.
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