Life and career
In 1968, Cristina Perincioli moved to Berlin to study at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb – German Film and Television Academy). This motivated her to documentary films ( Nixon in Berlin, Occupation of a Student Residence, Kreuzberg is Ours, Population Explosion) and feature films. Her docufiction about a women's strike, For Women: Chapter 1, from 1971 is one of the first contributions to Women's cinema in West Germany; the film won the "Award of the Film Journalists" at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 1972. Harun Farocki writes: "You can see how much fun liberating knowledge can be." [1]
She was a co-founder of both the Lesbian movement in 1972 and 1973 of the first "Women's Center". [2]
In 1977 Perincioli founded the Sphinx Filmproduktion GmbH, with Marianne Gassner as a production manager. The documentary fiction The Power of Men is the Patience of Women (ZDF/ Second German TV Channel, 1978) is also shown internationally. From an interview with Perincioli:
- "When in 1974 I saw the first shelters for battered wives in England, I started in Berlin to interview women about domestic violence and found an unsuspected level of abuse. We – women from the women's movement and committed journalists – began from now on, to mobilize the public by radio and television broadcasts and by the book 'Violence in Marriage'. 1976 the first women's shelter opened in (West-)Berlin. In 1978 we shot this film together with women from the shelter, acting their own experiences. Internationally successful, the film supported the women's shelter movement in Germany, Australia, Canada, the US, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and India. The title became a slogan." [3]
Michael Althen [4] described 2008 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung functions and effects of the film as a
- "... documentary fiction in which residents of Berlin's first women's shelter replay and comment their experiences with domestic violence. It's not about an individual fate, but about recurring patterns of violence and regret on men's side, about guilt and shame on women's side, about humiliating experiences in offices and the whole vicious circles of social and emotional dependencies. The film is strongest when articulating the silence of the social environment and lack of moral courage." [5]
Restored and digitised, both films For Women - Chapter 1 and The Power of Men... were shown at the Courtisane Festival in Ghent in 2024. Programme designer Kristofer Woods writes:
- "We glimpse at an all but forgotten approach to cinema, to a way of producing films with the purpose of social change. To politically engaged filmmaking not just in content, but in addressing the conditions of its production.“
In 1969, Perincioli was active in the anarchist paper Agit 883 , in 1972 she co-founded the lesbian movement and in 1973 the first Berlin women's centre at Hornstrasse 2 in Kreuzberg, [6] as well as the first Women's rape crisis center in Europe 1977.
In 1975, together with her partner Cäcilia Rentmeister, she wrote the screenplay for the first feature film about a lesbian relationship on German television, Anna und Edith (ZDF). The film shows how a love affair develops between two female colleagues in the middle of a labour dispute - similar to how many previously heterosexual women explored the "other shore" during the women's movement of the time.
Perincioli describes this as a contemporary witness in the rbb TV documentary series Berlin - Schicksalsjahre einer Stadt and also states how the women's movement of the 1970s found a particularly favourable climate as a "fast breeder" of pioneering ideas and practical projects under the "West Berlin cheese bell“ [7]
Perincioli published as radio- and book author. Inspired by research in London and Harrisburg, US, she contributed to the public debate and awareness about domestic violence and about the risks of nuclear energy.
From 1990 she developed interactive storytelling, and on this basis, two adventure game with interactive video (1992,1996), and created seven computer serious games for the public space ("Loud is Out", "Oh, the Few Drops", "Female, Male – and In-Between", "Culture Tester Rebellion") [8]
She has taught film production at KIMC Kenya Institute of Mass Communication [9] in Nairobi and the Universität der Künste Berlin, Computer Animation at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb – German Film and Television Academy), the Film School in Potsdam-Babelsberg, [10] and Multimedia Design at the School of Design in Bern [11] and Basel [12] until 1997.
From the late 1990s on, Perincioli ventured to use interactive media for "sensitive issues" such as sexual and domestic violence; she created – employing user-friendly methods such as Discovery learning – award-winning web internet portals for understanding, counselling and preventing violence, funded by the German Federal Environmental Foundation, [13] the Foundation Deutsche Jugendmarke, [14] the Daphne Programme of the European Commission [15] and the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. [16]
In 2015, Cristina Perincioli's new book Berlin wird feministisch. Das Beste, was von der 68er Bewegung blieb (Berlin Goes Feminist. Anarchism - Lesbianism - Feminism) was published in Germany. [17] She describes the beginnings of the German second women ́s movement in the revolutionary years 1968–1974 in West Berlin. Through a wealth of documents, 80 photographs, reflections and interviews with 28 feminist activists, she shows where she and her fellow campaigners drew their ideas from, as well as the fury and strength they needed to put these ideas into practice. Perincioli also considers the beginnings of the women ́s movement as an example of how the modernization of society was initiated by "direct democratic" actions.
According to Sonya Winterberg the book shows that the second German women's movement has "many mothers":
- "Perincioli...[offers] extensive and highly entertaining insights into the early lesbian and women's movement [...] This undogmatic, grassroots, autonomous and highly creative movement gave rise to vibrant projects, women's centers and lesbian groups, some of which still exist today. When Perincioli writes of the 'best that remained of the 68er movement, it is no exaggeration [...] Anyone who still believes that Alice Schwarzer was the mother of the new women's and lesbian movement would do well to take a look behind the scenes here." [18]
Claire Horst also emphasizes the new "look behind the scenes":
- "What a biography! Cristina Perincioli provides a first-hand account of the emergence of the second German women's movement, since she was there from the very beginning [...] And she doesn't ignore the turf wars and conflicts within the movement... [Another thing that makes the biography] well worth reading is the self-critical and often humorous stance the author adopts now, without distancing herself from the aims of the time." Horst also stresses the Berlin setting: "The book can also be read as a cultural history of the alternative Berlin of the 60s and 70s." [19]
An English version of the complete book, translated by Pamela Selwyn, is published online: see "Websites" below.
Living in a village in Brandenburg since 2003 she keeps goats, makes cheese and manages and transforms her pineforest into a climat reslient mixed forest.
