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An amateur pen drawing of a woman

Women in Berlin

Duration: 2h19m
Dates: Sat 31 Jan 2026 20:15

See Women in Berlin and The Cat Has Nine Lives for the special price of £15 when booked at the same time. The third film in our FOKUS: Films from Germany season is The Ordinaries, with tickets at the special price of £3.50.

Chetna Vora made Women in Berlin as an exchange student in the GDR in the 1980s, a grand collection of stories and impressions, from the perspective of women. A work only made more interesting by its material history and survival through the medium of VHS.

Who knows how many films would have been lost forever if it weren’t for a lousy quality VHS tape? Women in Berlin is one such nearly lost work and is the graduation project of Chetna Vora, a student from the Indian state of Gujarat, who had come to the German Democratic Republic through the nation’s foreign student programme. Originally, she had set out to learn book printing, but after a while found herself at the GDR’s film school in Potsdam, Babelsberg, where she studied directing.

Women in Berlin became a candid epic of GDR life from a female point of view, featuring interviews with women of all ages, from teenagers to an octogenarian. Vora was supposed to only make a short, not a feature. When she refused to cut the film down, official measures were taken. Sensing impending doom, Vora found someone with access to a VHS camera and taped Frauen in Berlin, while projecting it on a wall or sheet. The original film material has vanished. This VHS, now digitised, is all that remains.

FOKUS: Films from Germany

FOKUS: Films from Germany
A group of women wearing dirndls stand and sit in a green field, with one man in a suit standing in the middle of them

The Cat Has Nine Lives

Duration: 1h39m
Wed 4 Feb 2026
FOKUS: Films from Germany
A woman wearing a cardigan and a skirt stands in a storage department holds a magical glowijg book which shows two tiny people standing on top embracing.

The Ordinaries

Duration: 2h4m
Sun 8 Feb 2026

DCA Membership £25 PER YEAR

colourful seats in DCA cinema

Become a DCA Member and enjoy a range of benefits, offers and discounts across our programme while supporting us to enrich people’s lives through art, culture and creativity. Benefits include:

  • One free standard cinema ticket per year
  • £1 off your standard or over 60s ticket for regular Cinema screenings*
  • Priority booking on selected cinema seasons and gallery events
  • 10% off in DCA Shop when you spend £10 or more
  • 10% off DCA publications
  • 15% off standard tickets for Print Studio courses
  • £15 off Print Studio Masterclasses
  • 10% off Craft Sunday workshops
  • 10% off food in Jute Café Bar
  • Further offers and discounts at DCA’s discretion

 

Membership costs £25 for one year.
*One discount per Member per event.

  • Membership Period: 1 year
  • Price: £25.00
£25
Per year

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