Gay Pride Month
Director Kanchi Wichmann
Break My Fall depicts the painful end of a loving relationship.
Writer-director Kanchi Wichmann made his feature debut shooting on 16mm on the streets of east London.
Influenced by the formalism of early Chantal Akerman films such Je tu il elle (1975), it boasts music from local bands (Wet Dog, Peggy Sue) and realistic characterization of people and city in Bette Gordon’s cinema (Variety, 1983).
Released in 2012, Break My Fall (together with Weekend and others) is considered part of a new wave of queer cinema, charting queer experience in all its complexities.
Gay Directors: By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press).
About Wichmann
Wichmann was born in North Devon, to an English (Yorkshire) mother and a German father. She moved around in her childhood, settling in London at the age of 17. Her training including an HND in film and video at Surrey Institute of Art and Design and TV & Video production, City & Guilds at College of North East London, Tottenham.
At 18, Wichmann began making films using video and Super 8. She made her first 16mm narrative short film at the age of twenty one (Travelling Light).
Her first feature film Break My Fall was set in Hackney and released by Peccadillo Pictures in 2011. The film was distributed in over 20 territories via Paris-based sales agent Reel Suspects.
As well as writing and directing her own films, she has worked in many film-related jobs including film festivals, cinemas and for other directors most notably in the production office of the German director Ulrike Ottinger for her film Chamisso’s Shadow (2015).
In 2016 Wichmann wrote an article in the London-based feminist film journal Another Gaze, called Lesbian Films Don’t Make Money. The article detailed Wichmann’s struggle to raise finance on her second feature, which also featured a lesbian protagonist.
In 2017 Wichmann wrote and directed a ten-episode web series set in the Berlin queer scene called Mixed Messages, which was edited by LA-based filmmaker Cary Cronenwett and was released by Peccadillo Pictures.
As of 2014, Wichmann resides in Berlin, Germany.
Filmography:
On Standby (2020)
Vanilla (Das Musical) (2019)
Mixed Messages (2017)
Break My Fall (2011)
I Don’t Exist (2004)
Travelling Light (1999)
