SEVEN WOMEN SEVEN SINS (1986)

Produced by Brigitte Kramer, Maya Constantine for television
Produced by Maxi Cohen for theatrical release

Seven Women Seven Sins was commissioned by German Television ZDF in 1986 for an internationally renowned film series (Das Kleine Fernsehspiel) that supported independent filmmakers as no one in the world did at the time. While the New German Cinema was in its prime (with male directors gaining the majority of fame), they funded and acquired experimental and narrative feature films and innovative documentaries from some American independent filmmakers – alongside Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, and other internationally recognized filmmakers. Maxi Cohen (Joe and Maxi, South Central Los Angeles: Inside Voices) and Bette Gordon (Variety, Empty Suitcases) were two of the filmmakers whose films were included in this stellar series. Maxi’s documentary films were known for their intimacy and ground- breaking form. Bette’s feature films tackled obsession, pornography, and violence. Both filmmakers made a big impression on German audiences. 

ZDF invited 5 leading women filmmakers in Europe along with Maxi Cohen and Bette Gordon to interpret the Seven Deadly Sins.

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, (Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles) had an outstanding reputation and was even called “The greatest living filmmaker of our generation” by J. Hoberman, in the Village Voice.

Ulrike Ottinger (Johanna D'Arc of Mongolia, Korean Wedding Chest and 20 more films) is a major German filmmaker of the avant-garde and the fantastic. She has been prolific and world renown for her spectacular spectacle films of diverse subjects and forms.

Helke Sander, director of 28 films, made The All Around Reduced Personality, one of the most important and impressive German feminist films of the 1970s . 

Valie Export (Invisible Adversaries) is an Austrian radical feminist performance artist, experimental film and video maker.

Laurence Gavron is a French novelist, film reviewer and filmmaker, now making films in Senegal. 

As each filmmaker chose to interpret a sin as they wished, the final film was very diverse including traditional narrative fiction, experimental video, a musical, and a radical documentary, delivered in multiple formats 16mm, super 16, video and 35mm. 

The film aired on German television and Maxi went on to produce a version for theatrical release, unifying the formats into 16mm. The film premiered at the Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema, and Maxi’s film, Anger, which was not up for nomination as a short, surprisingly won the short film prize at the festival . The film represents a quintessential moment in filmography of the 1980s as it includes iconoclastic filmmakers that made an impression internationally. It was enthusiastically greeted at screenings at the time of release and is still requested. 

SYNOPSIS:
Seven women from five countries look at sin- as seen in the mid-1980s. 

GLUTTONY by Helke Sander (FUTTERN!) (West Germany)
Eve discovers the rapture of the apple and offers it to Adam, thus committing the original sin. Told in studio-bound cartoon style, this tale serves as an allegory for the plight of the contemporary male/female relationship. 

GREED by Bette Gordon (PAY TO PLAY) (United States) Three women have a strange, claustrophobic encounter in the ladies room of a luxurious Manhattan hotel. The bathroom attendant is sure she’ll win the lottery until the rich bitch destroys her ticket and the call girl deals with the consequences. Set in a timeless “twilight zone”, where objects bear a menacing aura and seemingly harmless conversation carries a threatening subtext, PAY TO PLAY is about greed, avarice and its victimization of women in a consumerist society. 

ANGER by Maxi Cohen (United States)
Maxi put an ad in the Village Voice looking for angry people. After receiving close to a hundred calls, she interviewed, amongst others, a four-time murderer who had never been caught, a Wall Street sadist, a cop framed by the police department, a hermaphrodite angry at herself for choosing to become a woman, and a couple stuck in their anger at one another. 

SLOTH by Chantal Ackerman (PORTRAIT D’UNE PARESSEUSE) (Belgium/France) Chantal pushes the phenomenon of being lazy to its utmost. The director, Chantal, tries to get out of bed in order to shoot this film about sloth. Like a kid who doesn’t want to go to school, she leisurely goes through the ordeal of preparing oneself for the day, for work, with contempt. 

ENVY by Laurence Gavron (IL MAESTRO) (France)
Laurence proves that jealous feelings are good for nothing. A man, the nephew of the theater director in a small town in France, envies the work of the conductor, one of his uncle’s employees. He imitates his idol’s life-style (dining on oysters and drinking champagne) and the way he conducts the opera, “The Barber of Seville”. One day, this frustrated little man kills his uncle and takes over the conductor’s job. The trouble is he can’t conduct anything but “Seville” and, put to the test, goes insane. 

PRIDE by Ulrike Ottinger (SUPERBIA) (West Germany)
An allegorical triumphant procession in operatic style is intercut with modern military parades of bizarre form and style. Actors; Delphine Seyrig, Irm Hermann, Yasuko Nagata