My artistic film work is informed by feminist thinking and a critical reflection on the cinematic gaze. In my aesthetics I strive for a strong handwriting incorporating hybrid documentary forms. Collective approaches are relevant for me in order to implement desirable forms of social and caring work structures.

Documentary Film
- in production -

Funded by nordmedia – Film- und Mediengesellschaft Niedersachsen/Bremen mbH

Directing/ Production Svenja Simone Schulte & Franziska Merlo
Cinematography 
Svenja Simone Schulte

The artistic documentary La Résidence follows the inhabitants of an international student residency in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, to trace global young perspectives on the European metropole. Set within the unique architecture of the residence on the premises of the revolutionary Université Paris 8, the film traces the ideas, stories and identities forming the inhabitant’s perspectives of Paris. While the city's myth and postcard reputation attracted them, the romantic Paris seems far away.
Between observing documentary images and staged scenes, the film approaches this tension from the point of view of the residency. Its inhabitants find themselves in a temporary home between these realities, learn about themselves and the spaces they inhabit. 

Lightning Rod is interested in pole dancing as a (horror) show, playing with expectations and glimpses of the female-read body, seemingly undermining weightlessness. The materiality of the stainless steel pole is examined, as is the footage of the Super 8 film.

Documentary Film
DE 20 Min, 2019

Funded by nordmedia - Film- und Mediengesellschaft Niedersachsen/ Bremen mbH, Friedrich Weinhagen Stiftung, Sparkasse Campus Stipendium, StuPa Uni Hildesheim, Studentenwerk OstNiedersachsen, TU Asta, Crowdfunding.

Directors Svenja Simone Schulte & Juliane Rettschlag
Production Svenja Simone Schulte Cinematography Julia Weingarten
Editing Sophie Messerschmidt

Since 1991 the double performer Sabine Schwarzlose has been appearing as Marlene Dietrich on Berlin‘s cabaret stages.With passion and self-irony, Schwarzlose reflects the longings connected to the myth of Marlene Dietrich: queer icon, femme fatale, a mystery in tailcoat and top hat. Unsurpassed, the actress and singer Marlene Dietrich understood how to stage herself as a mysteriously cool but irresistible iconic figure, whose influence reached far beyond film. As a designer of herself, she deliberately used various tricks and techniques: playing with gender identities and sexualities, praising surfaces, light and glamour. However, wind machines, complex lighting systems, film tricks and technologies have also helped to create the star. And made the audience dream. But what dream is dreamt here? What does it mean to become an authentic Marlene Dietrich? Is it about the looks, the posture, the smoky voice? Is there any more of the spirit of rebellion in it? With the help of the expert Schwarzlose, the film examines the production of the icon and returns to the place where it all began: to the former Kino-Traumfabrik, the Marlene Dietrich Halle in Babelsberg. 

Muscle Memory

Docufiction
CH/DE/FR, 22 Min, 2017

Funded by Jugendkulturpauschale Basel, Jaqueline Spengler Stiftung, Stiftung Futurum 

Directing/Production Svenja Simone Schulte & Miriam Coretta Schulte
Cinematography Svenja Simone Schulte 
Editing Sophie Messerschmidt 
Music Miriam Coretta Schulte 
Sound Design Michael Witte

In a near future, in which body-modification has advanced, a new medium of memory has been developed: Hack-No-Tech, from the french term hackers-non-technologiques; it looks like a dance but is a tool used to save information in the body.

How would the world change, when bodies suddenly become active memory-carriers?
Two sisters, Svenja Simone Schulte as filmmaker and Miriam Coretta Schulte as Hack-No-Tech-er, pursue this question further in their film «Muscle Memory».

In order to acquaint yourself with this advancing future, you will meet multiple players: a neuroscientist, an everyday Hack-No-Tech-er and a theatre scholar, as well as experience a small Hack-No-Tech gathering in Paris.Through conversations and situational experiments with the choreographies, various positions on the question of how to harness the potential of the human body will be revealed.