Helke Sander
Directing
Biography
Helke Sander is a German feminist filmmaker and author.
Born: January 31, 1937
Place of Birth: Berlin, Germany
Known For
Helke Sander: Cleaning House
Filmmaker and author Helke Sander is an icon not only of the women's movement, but also of new German cinema. Historical upheavals sometimes only need a small impulse to suddenly set petrified conditions in motion. Helke Sander triggered such a landslide-like change in Germany many years ago.
A German Youth
At the end of the 1960s the post-war generation began to revolt against their parents. This was a generation disillusioned by anti-communist capitalism and a state apparatus in which they believed they saw fascist tendencies. This generation included journalist Ulrike Meinhof, lawyer Horst Mahler, filmmaker Holger Meins as well as students Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader.
Invisible Adversaries
Anna, an artist, is obsessed with the invasion of alien doubles bent on total destruction. Her schizophrenia is reflected in the juxtapositions of long movie camera takes with violently edited montages: private with public spaces; black & white with colour, still photographs with video, earsplitting sounds with disruptive camera angles. Anna uses her body like a map; after a devastating quarrel with her lover, she paints red stitches on herself. Watching their scenes together, we realize how seldom, if ever before, the details of sexual intimacy have been shown in film from the point of view from a woman. Export privileges rupture over unity and never settles for one-dimensional solutions
Their Newspapers
Ihre Zeitungen is a political film rooted in the 1968 student campaign against the Springer press group, which controlled popular dailies such as the Berliner Zeitung and the Bild Zeitung. Claiming the latter were manipulating public opinion, the students laid siege to the publisher's offices. These events made a strong impression on the German collective conscience, and it's in this context that Farocki made this "agit-prop" film.
Bungalow
A young German soldier named Paul goes AWOL and returns to his childhood home in the countryside. Over a few summer days, Paul evades the responsibilities of everyday life and falls in love with his brother’s girlfriend, disrupting the lives of everyone in his circle.
The All-Around Reduced Personality: Redupers
Edda Chiemnyjewski, a freelance press photographer and single mother living in 1970s West Berlin, is confronted with the fact that "a cook has no time for affairs of state". She also fails to find a market for the project she has been working on with her women′s photography group that seeks to document the city. While from today′s perspective the city, which becomes one of the film′s protagonists, looks like post-war Berlin, little has actually changed as regards the precarious existence of free-lancers. With a heavy dose of self-irony Helke Sander, who also plays the leading role, tells of a divided life in a divided city.
Love Is the Beginning of All Terror
Story concerns two friends, Freya and Irmtraut and their relationships with the same man, Traugott, who finds it impossible to choose between the two women.
Liberators Take Liberties
Helke Sander interviews multiple German women who were raped in Berlin by Soviet soldiers in May 1945. Most women never spoke of their experience to anyone, due largely to the shame attached to rape in German culture at that time.
Der subjektive Faktor
At the end of the 1960s, a young woman laid the foundation of the women's movement. As well as political initiatives against male dominance, a detailed picture was drawn of society, which established the women’s motivation.
Silvo
Documentary showing the daily routine of Sander’s seven year old son, Silvo.
Filmography
as Herself
as Self (archive footage)
as Paar am Bahnhof
as Lucy (voice)
as Self
as Self - Interviewer
as Freya Lombardi
as Narrator (voice)
as Edda Chiemnyjewski
as Self