In 1978, Elfi Mikesch made a monumental film about femininity and the power of escapism in a teenage girl’s life. In visions of extravagant realities staged in the middle of a gloomy West Berlin living room, I Often Think of Hawaii features Carmen and her family trapped in their everyday surroundings.
Carmen lives in a proto-grunge universe rebelling against her Cinderella-like existence by means of escaping inside an illusion inspired by colorful postcards and Paul Eluard’s poetry. Forty years later, Gabrielle Stemmer shows us that the internet culture hides the traces of another type of illusion: the perfect life of an American housewife.
Her desktop documentary Clean With Me (After Dark) is a poignant depiction of the cruel realisation that this „perfection” is nothing but a facade and underneath it, women find themselves captives in what was once a dream life. The ethical voyeurism of her descent into these women’s lives calls out the apparent freedom of governing a household while following social media structures of vulnerability.
Both Mikesch and Stemmer adhere to the legacy of Jeanne Dielman and both of them manage to remind us that the clockwork of the patriarchal mechanism is still ticking whilst holding women entrapped and forcing them to escape however they can. The imagery of cleaning is crucial: cleaning as obsession, cleaning as a job, cleaning as therapy, cleaning as mockery and even cleaning as a substitute for a purpose.
Underlining the absolute loneliness and dullness of the confined spaces these women call home, both films present the illusion as a gentle protest against the rules of a world hostile to women. Sometimes fulfilling a dream and sometimes cracking one.
Calup propus de Gabriela Cardoș, Monica Dănilă și Andreea Chiper pentru Her Docs, Varșovia. Proiect dezvoltat în Rezidența F-SIDES Wildcards 2026 – un program de formare dedicat curatoriatului de film, conceput ca un laborator de idei în care participanții își dezvoltă propriile concepte curatoriale în dialog cu profesioniști din industrie și cu rețele internaționale de cinema.
