Independent Minded Young Women

Portrayal of actress Anna Thalbach
 

Anna Thalbach ©Alex Trebus

Untersuchungen an Mädeln

Untersuchung an Mädeln and Talk

Anyone who saw Anna Thalbach (31) on German TV comparing the Berlinale Film Festival must have realised she’s a pretty smart lady. Her presentation skills are intelligent, witty and to the point.
As an actress, her first role in front of the camera was at the age of six – at the side of her mother, Katharina Thalbach, in Thomas Brasch’s cinema film Engel aus Eisen. Although at first she didn’t want anything to do with the acting profession – in fact she studied photography, graphic design and fashion – she eventually followed in the family tradition. For her part, her eight-year-old daughter Nellie had her first stage role in a performance of Brecht’s Dreigroschenoper last year.
All the same, Anna Thalbach still sees her career focused on the arts rather than just on acting. She writes, she shoots photos and she draws. And if there’s one thing she cannot stand, it’s the attempt to stick her in a pigeonhole. “No way am I going to put myself in one category. Life is so prolific. And that’s what I want to be too”.
Anna Thalbach has both the far-sightedness and the opportunity to choose her own challenging roles. She was to be seen in *Burning Life*, *Oskar & Leni* and Der Untergang and her work has already received several awards, including the Max Ophüls Prize in 1992 and, in 2001, the German Television Prize for her role in Kindstod which was broadcast as part of the popular Tatort (Crime Scene) series on Germany’s WDR Channel 1.

For this particular Independent Minded Young Women session, Anna has selected her movie Untersuchung an Mädeln, because she reckons that this highly acclaimed Austrian film somehow sunk without trace in Germany. Director Peter Payer narrates the story of two young hitch-hikers (played by Anna Thalbach and Elke Winkens) who are accused of murder even though the body hasn’t been found. Between the police interviews, we see flashbacks that throw light not only on the sex life of the two accused but also on typically male double standards and on the misogynist preconceptions held by a village community in the 1970s.

Anna Thalbach reads Thomas Brasch
„At first I felt his head pressing strongly on my bladder and then, a few minutes later, his tail wiggling in my mouth. I didn't want to think about how the wolf had got inside me and why the position was wrong. I got into Tram N° 63 and travelled to Friedrichshain Hospital”.

It’s with these sentences, plain and unvarnished, that the story of Vor den Vätern sterben die Söhne (= approx. “Sons Die Before the Fathers”) begins. Thomas Brasch, son of a SED functionary and Deputy Minister of Arts in the former GDR, lets his generation speak for themselves. A generation who, in contrast to their parents, did not view socialism as an alternative to fascism and capitalism but as a restriction on their personal freedom. Since Brasch was not allowed to be published in the German Democratic Republic, in 1976 he emigrated to West Berlin taking Katharina and Anna Thalbach with him. In 1977, thanks to his everday tales about the GDR and his own political revolt, he quickly made a well-known name for himself in West Germany.
In February 2001, the poet and prose-writer died at the age of sixty. Anna Thalbach reads (in German) from some of her foster-father’s most important works.

Sa, 16.4. 20.00h Schauburg2 Untersuchung an Mädeln [Peter Payer, A 1999, 90’]

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