Getting to Know Barbara Loden

When I was a student at the University of Television and Film Munich in the early seventies, there were only three women in our feature filmmaking class; the rest were men who would get really famous later on, like Wim Wenders. Of course, the male students got favored. Still, it didn’t discourage me.

I first saw Wanda during that time, and I realized that we women mustn’t ever stop sharing our creativity, even if we have to overcome all these obstacles. There is a different perspective on life in our narratives and the images we use, in our thematic diversity and emotional depth. I was deeply impressed by the film. I asked myself, what kind of woman is Barbara Loden? What kind of relationship did she have with Elia Kazan? Why did she make such a movie?

Later, after quitting the university in 1972, I had some experiences that made me even more aware of the situation of women in the industry. By then, I had made a successful short film that had played at the film festival in Oberhausen, and my thesis film had been broadcast on television.

I wanted to adapt Liebeszauber, a short story by Ludwig Tieck, and I wrote the script and pitched it to several broadcast stations. They liked it, but they wanted to attach a very famous male director to it.

I had already been making films that drew attention to the challenges of being a woman in this field. They were portraits of women who had succeeded in this male-dominated world. My first was of Agnès Varda, made in 1977. That documentary was a powerful motivation for me to keep on producing. That’s how my series of women in film came together, spanning from the first female filmmaker, Alice Guy Blaché, to today.

In the summer of 1980, Konrad and I went to New York to produce a documentary about the history of women working in the American film industry. We visited Joan Micklin Silver and found out that Barbara Loden taught acting at Lincoln Center. She gave us Barbara’s phone number. I called her and we made plans to visit her.

I told Konrad to bring a tape recorder and camera to Lincoln Center. The class had just started. Some of the workshop participants were experienced actors, like Rutanya Alda, who played the Russian bride in The Deer Hunter, and Richard Bright, who was in The Godfather.

We introduced ourselves to Barbara and asked her if we could film her work. She was forty-eight years old, but she looked young in her mariner outfit with her straight blond hair—attractive and almost girlish. She was very friendly toward us and let us film her class.

I had the impression that she wanted to test our working method. We never interrupted her, never asked for a repetition, didn’t turn on the lights. We were barely noticeable, and maybe that convinced her to trust us. She immediately agreed to our proposal to make a film about her. The next day, we were invited to her house on West 86 Street. When we interviewed her in her office, it was just Konrad, the producer, the sound mixer, and me in the room. The mood was very calm but also intense. The room was like Noah’s Ark, filled with memorabilia from Barbara’s life, and it had a dense and creative working atmosphere. There were shelves on the wall with books by Maharaj Charan Singh, who had a huge impact on her life philosophy. In the middle of the gloomy room was a huge desk fully loaded with manuscripts, and to the left of the desk stood an ironing board like a boundary, as if Barbara wanted to signal to any intruder: Not any further! This is my world!

As soon as Konrad set up his camera, Barbara reacted with sympathy for our little team. What followed were intensive shoot days unlike anything I had never experienced in my work before.