Shooting the War - Women

Series looking at how WW2 was documented by both German and British home movie makers. Women who were drawn into the war were workers, mothers and combatants for the first time in history and those experiences were filmed, sometimes by women themselves. In Germany, amateur filmmaker Elisabeth Wilms shot everyday life of women in her home city of Dortmund and as those lives changed she continued to record events, including the stunning films of the destitution experienced by women in the immediate aftermath of the blitz on her home town. In Britain, Rosie Newman was doing very much the same, filming women as war changed their lives. She had remarkable access to the military and was able to capture the lives of woman at war in a way few others could match. Jean Riesco's father filmed her life as she became a woman at the start of the war. Jean recalls how everyone felt that there was no point in being cautious, how she got married and had a child. Other women joined the war effort, some working for the first time. Anne Richmond joined the Land Army, Iris Watts made armaments and Betty Hockey danced for the troops. It was the same in Germany. Renate Teller became a nurse, while Ilse Rohde, a member of the BDM, became a factory worker. The Jewish woman Esther Bejarano was a slave labourer in Auschwitz, her life saved by becoming a member of the Auschwitz orchestra.