I am my own woman

Duration: 91

Year Published: 1992

Creator: Rosa von Praunheim

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Sound: sound

Description: Rosa von Praunheim softens the boundaries between drama and documentary in his portrait of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (nee Lothar Berfelde), a resilient German transvestite whose adventurous life paralleled the cataclysmic events of his era. Tyrannized by a brutal father whom he later killed in self-defense, young Lothar escaped a troubled home environment by rummaging junk piles and secondhand shops for nineteenth-century Grunderzeit furniture and bric-a-brac. This youthful avocation formed the foundation of what was later to become a unique Victorian museum in the former German Democratic Republic. Barely suriving World War II and marooned in East Germany following the erection of the Berlin Wall, Berfelde, renaming himself Charlotte von Mahlsdorf after a Berlin suburb, became an active and beloved member of East Berlin's underground gay community. Government bureaucrats, however, took a dim view of Charlotte's activities, forcing her to move her museum repeatedly and sell off antiques to pay taxes. Today,Charlotte is a kindly, grandmotherly figure to Berlin's younger generations of gays and lesbians and the proud recipient of Germany's Cross of the Order of Merit for service to her country. (Circulates) Genre/FormFeature films.