Focus Feminist Heritage: Bandits

Event Information

In 2019 Netflix screened the final episode of Orange Is the New Black, the American TV show about a women’s prison in the American town Litchfield, which also quickly became a feminist hit. What is so fascinating about women’s prison films and why do they serve so well as feminist storytelling? Our “Focus Feminist Heritage” at the Berlin Feminist Film Week 2020 takes us right back to 1997 and acknowledges Katja von Garnier’s film Bandits as a great part of feminist herstory and pop culture. We’re very excited to announce a special guest: Bandits-actor Jasmin Tabatabai will join us for a conversation with American studies scholar Dr. Maria Sulimma, who will introduce the film with a short talk on women’s prison films and pop culture.

The Film

“Baby, don’t forget to catch me” – the Andreases, Tobiases and Christians of the German film critics all agreed: Katja von Garnier’s road movie was rubbish, even embarrassing, what was she thinking? The audience felt differently, especially amongst young women and girls, the film was an instant hit and Bandits turned into a feminist cult film.

Emma, Luna, Angel and Marie start a rock band while in prison and escape during a performance at the police ball. Once on the run, they take an attractive male hostage and play concerts along the way. Both the fictional band and the film itself became subjects of fan’s affections.

Jasmin Tabatabai is a German-iranian actor. After studying drama at the arts college “Hochschule für Musik und Kunst” in Stuttgart, she was discovered in 1992 playing the main role in the Swiss film Kinder der Landstrasse (Children of the open road). Tabatabai has since been a household name in the German film industry, acted in over 40 films and is known for Vier Minuten, Bandits, Der Baader Meinhof Komplex and Gripsholm.

Dr. Maria Sulimma is an American Studies scholar working in the intersecting areas of cultural studies, gender studies, feminist media studies, and urban studies. Based at the University Duisburg-Essen, she is the Postdoctoral Researcher in the Research Group “Scripts for Postindustrial Urban Futures: American Models, Transatlantic Interventions.” Her most recent publication is the monograph Gender and Seriality: Practices and Politics of Contemporary US Television which will be out with Edinburgh University Press in 2020.

Photo credit: © Olga Film/Rieger