Across China

Berlin 2017, HD, 17 min

The film is telling excerpts of my great-grandmothers journey through China from 1902 to 1904. The viewer can follow her trip by listening to excerpts of her accounts of the two year trip, the texts are taken from two books, one that she, and one that her former husband, the well-known scientist Wilhelm Filchner, wrote about their time in China and Tibet. The story itself leaves the viewer with mixed emotions, on one hand there is the emancipationist fact that my great-grandmother was among the first women to go on expeditions through Asia. On the other hand, there is the harsh reality of the superior behavior of the Europeans in times of colonialism, the every day racism one can hear coming from their mouths and the general view on women throughout the world.