Between state interference and personal perspectives

She learned the craft of filmmaking from scratch without any academic training and, thanks to her talent and assertiveness, became one of the few female documentary filmmakers to hold her own in the male-dominated world of the DEFA documentary film studio for a long time. From her debut film Wir verstehen uns (We Understand Each Other, 1965) to the end of DEFA in 1992, Gitta Nickel (1936-2023) made over 60 films, many of them commissioned by or produced for East German television, but none of them state-commissioned films in the sense of the term at that time. 
More consistently than many of her male colleagues, the filmmaker, who was born in Briensdorf, East Prussia, focused on women, protagonists she chose herself. Her films attempted to reveal the contradictory, constantly and rapidly changing connections between everyday life and the world of work within the GDR.
Nickel did not shy away from contradictions in the lives of the women she portrayed, such as the ongoing conflict between balancing work and family life. Nickel puts the state-proclaimed equality of women to the test in practical social terms. She addresses shortcomings, not as a theoretical discussion, but in very concrete terms based on the “fates” of individuals. This is where Nickel also found the deeper meaning of her work: helping to recognize individual contradictions and the resulting demands on others, not least on society as a whole. Seen in this light, Nickel was and remained a troublemaker.                   A distinctive feature of Nickel's films is her frequent avoidance of voice-overs in favor of the protagonists' own accounts. Nickel asked her partners questions and let them talk—and they spoke willingly, openly, without inhibitions or intimidation. Taken together, all aspects of Nickel's work are characterized by a palpable openness, intimacy, and closeness. They are works that oscillate between the constraints of state propaganda and the subjective view of a form-conscious filmmaker – thus painting a multi-layered picture of the country and its people during the GDR era. (Günter Agde)