The Surface Tension Trilogy, 2015
short Film Trilogy
The Surface Tension Trilogy is an experimental film trilogy which tracks the interwoven stories of famous women and artists in the city of Berlin during the Weimar Era. The Surface Tension Trilogy dramatizes the stories of Frida Kahlo & Anita Berber (Frida & Anita), Hannah Höch (HÖCH), Leni Riefenstahl and Eva Braun (Die Neue Frau). Rosenfeld purposefully casts their friends as these figures, and thus ‘queers’ these histories through the imminent aspects of the lives of these characters and the affective space that opens between them and their performers, in the speculative junction of past and present.
By choosing to work across different mediums of moving image (HD Video, VHS Video, hand processed 16mm film), and by setting their stories in the Weimar era while shooting within the cultural landscape of present day Berlin, Rosenfeld forces us to understand time and history as fluid concepts that can be unpicked, drawing attention to how we create narratives and identities and how they can be re-created and embodied through different representations.
Posing questions concerning the usefulness of nostalgia, history as lived experience and the way in which political and creative economy unfolds, The Surface Tension Trilogy looks at how history is discursive, hidden, and lived. Rosenfeld’s trilogy imitates a dialogue around how we can move forward in radicalizing how history, particularly queer history, is recorded.
The Surface Tension Trilogy hailed it’s world premiere at The Barbican (London, U.K,) in 2015 with the Berlin premiere taking place shortly after at The Deutches Historical Museum’s Zeughauskino. It continues to screen internationally at art institutions and film festivals.
This work is distributed by The Video Data Bank.
Frida & Anita
(Starring: Richard Hancock and Le Margoux)
Frida & Anita depicts Rosenfeld’s imagined interaction between Anita Berber, an infamous chanteuse in Berlin during the 1920’s and activist and artist, Frida Kahlo. Frida & Anita encapsulates all the deliciously romantic clichés of Weimar, while also looking at a possible, yet unlikely, convergence between these figures. It is an account of a love affair between two iconic artists during the Weimar period that speaks to Rosenfeld’s present day life and the inspirational queer artists and activists in their community.
Höch
(Starring: Vika Kirchenbauer, Marit östberg, Hannes Ribarits, Tina Ribarits, James Roslind, Tom Weller, Birte Endrejat)
Höch, a pseudo-documentary focusing on the Dadaist artist Hannah Höch as Liz reflects on their experiences living working during the Weimar period. Rosenfeld conducts an interview questioning Höch (as interpreted by people from the artist’s community) about their skepticism regarding the way nostalgia is being co-opted to experience a notion of radicality, decades later. Liz wonders why the youth of 1970’s Berlin are so interested in feeling and trying to channel and fabricate the sense of reckless abandon they believe existed in Berlin in the 1920s. Höch compares the socio-political landscape of Berlin in the 1970’s to its romanticized past of the Weimar Era, while questioning the usefulness of nostalgia as a politically emotive tool.
Die Neue Frau
(Starring: Susanne Sachesse and Marie Popall)
Set in the final years of The Weimar Republic, ‘Die Neue Frau’ portraits Hitler’s lover Eva Braun and the infamous Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl through the lens of Riefenstahl’s personal home movies. Rosenfeld imagines these two women as integral witnesses of Berlin’s transition from decadence into fascism while engaging in an ambiguous and sexually charged relationship.
(Text: Jana Morrison)
Written and Directed by Liz Rosenfeld
Produced by nowMomentnow