CONSPIRATORS
(KONSPIRATORKI)



2006, 89', Polish, English, German with English subtitles

DIRECTION:
Paul Meyer
SCRIPT:
Paul Meyer
CINEMATOGRAHY:
Uli Fisher
MUSIC:
Martina Schwartz
EDITING:
Dagmar Kambah, Barbara Tannishen
SOUND:
Volker Zeigemann
PRODUCER:
Herbert Schwering
PRODUCED BY:
Loin Film

April 12, 1945. The Western Front. Polish soldiers come across a POW camp in Emsland. To their great surprise, they discover 1,726 women, most of them young and attractive: they are Poles. The women were resistance fighters in the failed Warsaw Uprising of 1944. According to the capitulation agreement, women were given the same rights as men - to be treated as POWs as defined in the Geneva Convention.

The film begins and ends with the POW camp. From here thoughts turn to the time of the occupation and the uprising. Here, the women applied on a small-scale principles they had learned in conspiracy. And from here they dispersed after the war to all corners of the world. The film adopts resolutely the perspective of female resistance against the occupying power. Since resistance in Poland was always a matter for matter for the many, German director Paul Meyer (born in Emsland in 1945) portrays the world and way of life of a whole generation of Polish women between 1939 and 1945. Their narratives are augmented with archive material, some of it previously unknown.

Sunday, November 18, 2007 at 3:00 pm. (GALLERY THEATRE)