A year-long program featuring films by feminist filmmakers and video artists

For 12 Moons, one of the exhibition rooms at Schwules Museum is transformed into a film lounge inviting visitors to encounter various cinematic formats and international queer feminist positions. The film lounge is open during regular Museum opening hours, with each new moon initiating a new program cycle.

The series is a yearlong intervention against the underrepresentation of women’s* perspective, specifically in media and museum contexts, but also in the arts and society overall. Month by month, the screenings raise questions about the construction and communication of forms of femininity_ies and also gauge the potential of an alternative gaze.

In search of classics in lesbian and feminist film history, of contemporary queer positions and of the voices of women* of color, we will turn to the OWLs (Older Wiser Lesbians) and talk to experts of porn film. We will dig through archives and visit festivals and ask the communities about the stories that need to be seen and heard.

The selected films provide insights into everyday lives and desires, they question relationship structures and power constellations. A critical eye is cast on societal pressures, while times of uprising and resistance against coercive gender norms offer inspiration. The utopian concepts and moments of healing emerging from the selected films are testimonies to the global struggle of women* for respect, self-determination and spaces to unfold.

Team
Program curator: Vera Hofmann
Project assistance: Felix Roadkill and Anina Falasca

Scenography with Carolin Gießner and Théo Demans

Vera Hofmann is a Berlin-based artist and a member of the board of directors at Schwules Museum.

12 Moons is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe as part of the project Year of the Women*.