ORF-E
German
2x 45 mins,  2x 52 mins,  1x 90 mins

Ever since its infancy, the world of flight has been largely considered the domain of men. Now, UNIVERSUM HISTORY explores the stories of some of the women who challenged the status quo, and whose creativity, perseverance and death-defying achievements shaped the earliest days of the human conquest of the skies. In 1910, Lilly Steinschneider from Austria-Hungary and Germany’s Melli Beese share a dream: they want to learn to fly. Beese, a sculptor and technology student, embarks on her journey at the Berlin-Johannisthal airfield, while Steinschneider secretly leaves her family home in Budapest and makes her way to the airfield near the town of Wiener Neustadt in Austria. During one of her first flights, Beese breaks several bones when her plane crashes. Undaunted, she returns to the air and is soon chosen to fly an iconic new aircraft. Male pilots, fearful of losing their reputation as heroes of the air, bully Beese mercilessly, but she passes the pilot’s exam and establishes herself as a force to be reckoned with. Around the same time, Lilly Steinschneider earns her pilot’s license and attracts attention by performing daring feats for air show audiences. Meanwhile, in France, Marie Marvingt has become the first person to cross the North Sea in a hot air balloon and is now gaining success as an aircraft pilot. The outbreak of the First World War interrupts the promising careers of these early female aviators in Europe. Lilly Steinschneider finds herself out of a job when the nascent air show industry closes down. Planes are now to be used for primarily military purposes. Steinschneider offers her services as a pilot but is denied. She becomes a nurse and never returns to flying. Melli Beese has, by this time, founded her own flight school and branched out into aircraft design. However, her marriage to a Frenchman causes her and her husband to be deemed “undesirable aliens”, and she is refused access to airfields and infrastructure. After the war, misfortune haunts Beese, and she eventually takes her own life. In France, women fare somewhat better. Marie Marvingt launches a petition for female pilots to fly military transport planes and even takes part in combat missions. Having shown an early interest in the potential of aircraft for medical uses, she devotes much of her life after the war to developing and improving air ambulances. Following the war, women are banned from flying commercially. All the same, a new generation of female pilots takes to the air and sets impressive records, flying over the Atlantic Ocean and the Andes, and even around the world. Despite their achievements, they find themselves trapped between the freedom of the skies and social norms that continue to disadvantage women. Above and Beyond – The First Female examines the stories of these exceptional women and their achievements, as well as the social constraints they faced. The 90-minute documentary features rarely seen archive materials and historical context provided by experts within a framework of elaborate, high-quality reenactments. More than 100 years after Lilly Steinschneider, Milli Beese, Marie Marvingt and others first took to the skies, their legacies continue to inspire generations of women.