Dialogue and exchange is central to the structure of Wir haben lange geschwiegen. Made by a group of students at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich, the film alternates between fictional scenes depicting what Frauenfilmgruppe München member Sylvia Edwinsson describes as “typical situations in which women find themselves over and over again” and documentary sequences in which a consciousness-raising group responds to these scenarios.

“When I joined the women’s film group, I met two women from the film school in Munich who saw the need to finally create working conditions for themselves as women in which they could realise their plans with less interference. In this process they had founded the women’s film group with the plan to make a film about specifically female issues. The chance to offer opportunities for identification, to present problems that are perceived as ‘isolated’ as ‘collective’ and at the same time the opportunity to make the work of the groups in the women’s movement as an action that concerns all women and that uses specific examples to tell what women think and feel about women, and also to document documenting these processes — the medium of film offered all of this.” (Gisela Novak)