After a visit to the West, Ella Milova and Irina Pismennaja realise that concepts of feminism differ greatly between east and west. The Belarusian filmmakers task director Yury Khashevatsky with shooting a cinematic letter directed at, among others, their Bremen colleague Helke Sander. The film documents everyday hardships in a dictatorship and an economy of scarcity. They speak about women’s work and sexual equality to workers and party functionaries, prisoners and women in Tajikistan who describe what they do as slave labour. Not long before the film was made, expressing those kinds of views would have been a criminal act. They travel as far as Siberia to bear witness to how the women in orange vests do the heavy labour in the country. It boils down to: “You know, the longer we flew, drove and filmed, the more I became convinced that you were right – men built this world for themselves.” Shot during the last two years of the Soviet era, the film documents exploitation, repression, militarism, violence and corruption as elements of an unwavering patriarchal doctrine.

Oranzhevye zhilety, BY/G 1993, directed by Yury Khashevatsky, 66 min, Russian, German, German subtitles

Short film: Dirty Girls, USA 1996, directed by Michael Lucid, 18 min