Die Patriarchin (1990)

In 1889, young Eliza Elliott left Wales for London and South Africa to see the world all on her own. 10 years later, she married a German to start a large family and a steamboat company with him, in the small harbor town of Emden, North of Germany. Her husband Wilhelm Nübel and all her sons died much too early, but her daughters survived - at the time of filming they are all well over 80 years old. Comfortably seated in the old garden of their childhood to have tea and retell their mothers life story, they passionately discuss what made her forget all earlier ideals of independence. Why did she change her mind? In her youth, Eliza had sympathized with the suffragette movement, but as a mother she told her daughters to serve men and be grateful for it. Also, as an Englishwoman and world traveler, in Germany she had to face neighbors who despised her nationality and unusual behavior. This and the two wars made her lose her voice and withdraw from all small-town public life. Nevertheless, her daughters and everybody else would always refer to her as the admired and influential head of family - no one did anything without her approval. Throughout two German wars, they also saw her as their secret "better conscience", who somehow had more wisdom than all of them, and who withstood the Nazis and all anti-British sentiments. Beautiful excerpts of the the family's 16mm home-movie film stock illuminate this portrait of a strong woman whose voice was literally quietened, but who paradoxically managed to make sure her influence was felt, even generations after her death.