“Beware of everything, especially men”, Zelma was told as a rule of thumb for a successful life as a woman. But when you meet the greatest love of all, and it happens to Zelma several times, biochemistry takes over and all advice is forgotten. In an animated musical, Signe Baumane’s protagonist dances her way through promising romantic beginnings, disappointed hopes and failing marriages – only to find out that she had better make the rules herself.

How much does this Zelma have in common with her inventor? Did Signe Baumane, too, meet a Sergey once and was so overwhelmed by noradrenaline, serotonin and dopamine that she simply failed to hear his condescending tone? In any case, the native Latvian and New Yorker by choice is known for using taboos and questionable notions of desirable and permitted, therefore “proper” femininity as a source of friction for her stories. For a long time, she remained faithful to the short form, until she presented her first feature-length animation in 2014 with “Rocks in My Pockets” – also at DOK Leipzig. She follows it up with “My Love Affair with Marriage” – not just in terms of length, but also in terms of the ironic, entertaining and yet serious exploration of the roles that biology and unexamined retold myths assign to women.

A Turkish woman emigrates to Germany in the 1970s to earn money as a guest worker. Her children have to stay with their grandparents and it takes a few years before the mother can bring them over. In memory, this period feels almost unbearable and endless. Özgür, the family’s youngest daughter, describes what it’s like to grow up without a mother.

Everything in Edgar’s life is well-ordered and always in the same place. And his favourite food is meat. A trip to the slaughterhouse takes his appetite away and he brings a calf home. The calf grows into a cow and, of course, turns his well-ordered life upside-down. His favourite cup and the television set break and Edgar realises that he needs to make more changes.