Angelina Maccarone

Charlotte Rampling (left) and Angelina Maccarone in 2011

Angelina Maccarone is a German film director and writer.

Personal life

Born in Pulheim, Germany in 1965, Maccarone originally sought a career in music before turning to film. She attended the University of Hamburg and majored in German and American Studies.[1]

Career

Maccarone began writing lyrics at age 14. She has been writing screenplays since 1992.[2]

Filmography

  • Kommt Mausi raus?!, 1995
  • Alles wird gut, 1998
  • Ein Engel schlägt zurück, 1998
  • Fremde Haut (Unveiled), 2005
  • Vivere, 2007
  • Verfolgt (Hounded), 2007

Alles Wird Gut (Everything Will Be Fine)

Alles Wird Gut (Everything Will Be Fine), released in 1998, is a German comedy. Written by Angelina Maccarone and Fatima El-Tayeb,[3] Everything Will Be Fine was the first German film since Toxi with Black German female protagonist. Additionally, it was the first German comedy with a non-white protagonist.[3] The film aired on German TV and brought novelty to German film through its use of comedy to highlight racism.[3] Maccarone drew from screwball comedy of the 1930s and took it back, made it witty, and “queered” it.[4] Additionally, Everything Will Be Fine moved away from a “problem film”, one that accentuates strangeness, to a film that highlights black female protagonists who are self-sufficient and free.[4] The black characters were not depicted as strangers or problems for the German nation through Maccarone’s ability to show the “everydayness” of black Germans.[4] This is in stark contrast to Toxi, a 1952 German film, that highlights Toxi, a young black German girl, as a problem.

To offer a brief overview, Nabou, an outspoken Afro-German woman, wants nothing more than to win back her ex-girlfriend. Nabou begins to work as housekeeper for Kim, a workaholic who aims to become partner in an advertising agency.[5]

Cast:[6]

Nabou: Kati Studemann

Kim: Chantal de Freitas

Giuseppa: Isabella Parkinson

Kofi: Pierre Sanoussi-Bliss

Katja: Aglaia Szyszkowitz

Dieter: Uwe Rohde

Co-writer Fatima El-Tayeb comments on representation in Everything Will Be Fine:[7]

“Angelina and I had talked before about writing a script together, but I think our idea to make a film with two black women in leading roles basically started then. The presence of black women on the screen is still extremely rare in mainstream films as well as in feminist/lesbian films, both in Germany and in the United States. The debates around racism in the lesbian community often resulted in the introduction of "the black character." In these cases, the protagonist is either reduced to being black, which means that blackness is used to initiate a discussion on racism, or a black person is totally "whitened," which means that she/he appears isolated in an otherwise white world with no connection to a community of color. We wanted our script to reflect the world that we actually were living in, an urban German scene that is not nearly as white as the media make it out to be. Our decision to cast two black women in leading roles had a lot to do with wanting to overcome this representation of blackness as a single and self-sufficient marker”

References

  1. ↑ Kingsley, Simon. "Director's Portrait: Angelina Maccarone - Pushing The Envelope". german films. Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-06-09.
  2. ↑ Swartz, Shauna (2005-11-17). "Interview with Unveiled Director Angelina Maccarone". AfterEllen.com. Archived from the original on 7 June 2007. Retrieved 2007-06-10.
  3. 1 2 3 Mukhida, L. (2012), AGAINST THE PULL OF CONVENTION: SUBVERSIVE LAUGHTER IN ANGELINA MACCARONE'S ALLES WIRD GUT. German Life and Letters, 65: 489-502. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0483.2012.01584.x
  4. 1 2 3 Alexander Weheliye. “Identity Politics in Germany" Lecture. February 2018. Northwestern University.
  5. ↑ Everything Will Be Fine (1998), retrieved 2018-03-24
  6. ↑ Everything Will Be Fine (1998), retrieved 2018-03-24
  7. ↑ Kosta, Barbara. “Everything Will Be Fine: An Interview with Fatima El-Tayeb.” Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture, University of Nebraska Press, 13 Oct. 2010, muse.jhu.edu/article/392691/summary.
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