Screening and Discussion: Lee

Lee tells the story of Lee Miller (Kate Winslet), an American photographer. Determined to document the truth of the Nazi regime, and in spite of the odds stacked against female correspondents, Lee captured some of the most important images of World War II.

The film is not a biopic, instead it explores the most significant decade of Lee Miller’s life. As a middle-aged woman, she refused to be remembered as a model and male artists’ muse. Lee Miller defied the expectations and rules of the time and travelled to Europe to report from the frontline. There, in part as a reaction to her own well-hidden trauma, she used her Rolleiflex camera to give a voice to the voiceless. What Lee captured on film in Dachau and throughout Europe was shocking and horrific. Her photographs of the war, its victims and its consequences remain among the most significant and historically important of the Second World War. She changed war photography forever, but Lee paid an enormous personal price for what she witnessed and the stories she fought to tell.

After the screening we will discuss the topic of war photography with:

Fabian Ritter grew up between a perfect Franconian small town, Austrian mountain scape and so called „no-go areas“ in Germany. Shaped by insights into different cultures and ways of life, he is interested in social phenomena and tensions of society. Today, he focuses on those topics with artistic and documentary approaches. Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, he has been concerned with the impact on people on the ground. Ritter has completed a HEFAT training program in 2022.

Since 2019, he holds an B.A. in photography from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Dortmund and is working as a freelance documentary photographer in Europe. His work has been published in major international media outlets such as The Washington Post, TIME, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, GEO and The Guardian.

Host or Publisher AmerikaHaus NRW e.V.