Same, Same but Different: Filmmakers are Hikers on the Globe and Create Globalisation From Below

The significance of political engagement, queerness and transnationalism in both the cinematic oeuvre and biography of filmmaker, Monika Treut is outlined in this article, via an exploration of her childhood in a divided Germany stained by National Socialist atrocities; the activism, research and filmmaking which simultaneously offered a political and a creative outlet during her 20s; and her subsequent travels across Europe, North and South America and Asia, inspired not only by international networks of friends and colleagues but also the constant, and necessary, pursuit of film funding. Treut’s ‘hiking on the globe’, as she calls it, has resulted in a filmography comprising multi-lingual, feminist narrative and documentary films, which have secured her position as one of the leading lights in queer independent filmmaking.