Inter∞Note01 An intimate study of OYOYO - a film by Chetna Vora
Chetna Vora, an Indian student from Palitana in Gujarat, who came to GDR in the mid 1970s made two important films during her study at the Babelsberg Film Academy; the first OYOYO was towards her third year submission in 1980 and Women In Berlin towards her graduation in 1981.
In OYOYO, Chetna interviews students from many coun- tries about their parcours in their hostel. This film is in the archive of Babelsberg Film Academy and was shared with me via Vimeo by Chetna’s partner Lars Barthel for research purposes. The cut that I have received of the film is 47 minutes and 57 seconds long.
This is a study of the politics of friendship towards feminist socialist internationalism as a concept by means of OYOYO. This concept lies in a vector to used and abused concepts of solidarities, networks, rhizomatiks, pattern based thinking and alliances. As students from social- ist countries such as Mongolia, Chile, India, Bissau (in today’s Guinea-Bissau), Cuba, Mali, Greece arrive in East Germany and anti-colonial struggles and post-coloniality turn on the (-x to +x) axis of the Cold War period, the binaries get displaced.
