I Am My Own Woman
File:I am My Own Woman.jpg
Directed byRosa von Praunheim
Written byValentin Passoni
Produced byRenée Gundelach
René Perraudin
StarringCharlotte von Mahlsdorf
Ichgola Androgyn
Jens Taschner
CinematographyLorenz Haarmann
Edited byMike Shephard
Music byJoachim Litty
Production
company
Rosa von Praunheim Filmproduktion
Release dates
Germany December 31 1992
United States April 29 1994
Running time
91 minutes
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman

I Am My Own Woman (German: Ich bin meine eigene Frau ) is a 1992 German film directed by Rosa von Praunheim. The film, a documentary-drama, follows the life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, an East German transvestite who survived the Nazis and the repression of the Communists and helped start the German gay liberation movement. The film is based on Mahlsdorf's autobiography: I Am My own Woman, published in 1992.

Plot

Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a male to female transvestite, recounts incidents from her eventful life. Now elderly, she runs the Grunderzeist Museum, fulfilling her dream of living as a woman from the turn of the century. Scenes of her life are dramatized. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

Life was difficult for Charlotte growing up as Lothar Berfelde, in Nazy Germany during World War II. An effeminate boy, she enjoyed cleaning and dusting at the home of her benevolent great uncle. Her early desire to live as woman finally found an outlet when he was sent on vacation to Eastern Prussia in the hose old of her aunt Luise, herself a member of the third sex. A female to male transvestite, aunt Luise surprises her nephew trying our female outfits. She allows the youth to dress at home as a girl and gives as a reading material the Books the transvestite by Dr Magnus Hirshfeld. She also respects the boy’s privacy when she finds her nephew having sex in the barn with a farm boy.

Back in Berlin, after the death of his great uncle, the young Lothar, found himself at the complete mercy of his brutal and father. Trying to save his mother and himself from his father punishment and threats, Lothar bludgeons his father to death, a crime for which he is psychiatrically evaluated and imprisoned. The defeat of Germany during the war and the allied invasion sets the boy free. Wandering through the street of Berlin, he barely escapes to be killed as a deserted by German soldiers.

By 1946 Lothar has come to identify herself as a feminine being in a masculine, lives now full time as a woman with the name Charlotte. She moves into the destroyed Friedrishfelde castle and spends years and a lot of hard work trying to restore it. But eventually she is expelled by the East German authorities. Working as a domestic in the household of Herbert von Zitzenau, an elderly equestrian officer, she is seduced by the her employer and they start a sexual relationship. She explains that she preferred older lovers feeling protected by them the way women do. That affair lasted several years until Zitzenau’s health declined and death.

Even though life for gays is difficult under the communist regime of East Germany, they find the way around. Cruising a public restroom, Charlotte meets Joechen, with whom she could be a real woman. Their relation with Sadomasochism role playing last for twenty seven year until Joeche’s death

For more than thirty years Charlotte manages to live her life as a woman in East Germany. She preserves the entire contents of East Berlin's first (and only for many years) gay bar, after the DDR government closed the bar, and moved to demolish the building. Its contents were transferred to the Grunderzeist museum in Mahlsdorf run by Charlotte and a lesbian couple. In 1989 the elderly Charlotte, very much active, takes a role in the first East German gay film. Its premiere coincides with the fall of Berlin Wall. But even in a unified Germany Charlotte has to face many problems. The German government takes the museum and its contents from Charlotte hands and she and her gay friends are attacked by neo-Nazis during a celebration at the museum. In 1992 her labor is recognized when receives the Cross of the Order of Merit from the government for furthering the cause of sexual freedom.

Cast

Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

References

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