By Machaela Nicholls
Christa Wolf was a revolutionary German novelist whose personal writings empowered the German people to stand up against oppression and the patriarchal society. In Time Loops: In Conversation with Christa Wolf (1990), we are allowed into Wolf’s home as she tells us of her involvement within the political sphere and the change she helped to enact.
We are shown archive footage from political and literary meetings alongside in-home interviews. Some of this is interlaced with Wolf’s voice-over reading from her novels and speeches. Through this we gain understanding of what inspired her artistic work.
She explains that she writes from a very personal place and is constantly questioning herself, which she brings into her writing. She talks about the effect growing up in Nazi Germany had on her writing and how she always advocated for a better government. Wolf is also inspired by love in her writing, stating that writing would suffer without love and that you need love to be able to write.
Wolf also advocates for women’s rights and the importance of women having a voice. This led her to founding a woman’s writing club in the 1980s where they would meet and discuss politics and their artistic work.
This film brings a voice to a great woman whose involvement in politics and writing changed Germany for the better. She decided to take action even when she felt that everyone was against her.
You can watch Time Loops: In Conversation with Christa Wolf on Kanopy
Further viewing:
Divided Heaven (1963) – based on Wolf’s novel, Der geteilte Himmel, directed by Konrad Wolf
All My Girls (1979) – directed by Iris Gusner
35 Photos (1984) and Winter Adé (1988) – directed by Helke Misselwitz