Dagmar Gueissaz-Teufel

Dagmar Gueissaz-Teufel is a documentary filmmaker born in 1941 in Tuttlingen, Germany. Between 1982 and 1989, she directed six films for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Her first film, Plenty of Nothing (1982), explores the essential role of women on farms. Her next film, The Treadmill (1984), produced by Studio D (the NFB’s feminist production studio), sheds light on the invisible labor of women working in the isolation of their homes. This was followed by Passiflora (1985), half-fiction half-documentary, co-directed with Fernand Bélanger, which presents an experimental portrait of otherness in Montreal. In Les polissons (1987), Gueissaz-Teufel captures young people from Rouyn-Noranda reflecting on environmental issues and pondering what the state of our planet would be in 2001. In 1988, with L’intelligence du cœur, she examines the causes behind the lack of social and political recognition for the parallel networks created by women to transform the social fabric. Finally, in A Time to Reap (1989), another Studio D film, she depicts the victories of Quebec women farmers who, through determination and solidarity, achieve the recognition they have long sought. Presented at dozens of festivals and screenings across North America and Europe, Dagmar Gueissaz-Teufel's work has also been the subject of numerous studies in academic publications on Canadian and Quebec cinema.