HELKE SANDER Born 1937 in Berlin, evacuated, fled, 15 schools in 15 cities, acting school in Hamburg, marriage and move to Finland, one son: Silvo Lahtela, b. 1959, writer. From 1962: directed the Finnish University Students’ Theatre, improvisations, happenings, traveling stage director on behalf of the Association of Finnish Workers’ Theatres. 1963: editor at Suomen Mainos-TV. 1964: assistant to Joan Littlewood in London. 1965: return to Germany. From 1966: member of the first class year of the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. Active in the students’ movement beginning in 1967. Co-founder in 1968 of the “Action Council for the Liberation of Women” and the anti-authoritarian, autonomous children’s day-care centers “Kinderläden” in Berlin. 1971: founding of the “Bread and Roses” group, which published the “Women’s Handbook No. 1 on Abortion and Contraception”. 1973: curated the first international women’s film festival in Berlin jointly with mit Claudia von Alemann. 1974: founder and publisher of the magazine “Women and Film”. 1981-2001: professor at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg.
FILMS
“Break the Power of the Manipulators” (Brecht die Macht der Manipulateure, 1967), “The All-Round Reduced Personality – Redupers” (Die allseitig reduzierte Persönlichkeit – Redupers, 1977), “the subjective factor” (der subjektive faktor, 1981), “The Trouble with Love” (Der Beginn aller Schrecken ist Liebe, 1984), “Liberators Take Liberties” (BeFreier und Befreite, 1992), “Village” (Dorf, 2001), “In the Midst of the Malestream – Factional Disputes in the New Women’s Movement” (Mitten im Malestream – Richtungsstreits in der neuen Frauenbewegung, 2005), i.a.
BOOKS
“The Three Women K” (Die Geschichten der drei Damen K), “Oh, Lucy”, “The Last Sexual Intercourse and Other Stories About Aging” (Der letzte Geschlechtsverkehr und andere Geschichten über das Altern), “Imagination and Work – A Biographical Dialogue” (Fantasie und Arbeit – biografische Zwiesprache) with Iris Gusner, “The Emergence of Gender Hierarchy as an Unintended Side Effect of the Social Consequences of Childbearing and the Loss of Fur” (Die Entstehung der Geschlechterhierarchie als unbeabsichtigte Nebenwirkung sozialer Folgen der Gebärfähigkeit und des Fellverlusts), i.a.
AWARDS
1979 First Prize Film des Femmes, Jeune Cinema Hyères, France, and L‘Âge d’Or, Brussels (“Redupers”) / 1981 Venice Biennale, I.S.D.A.P. Award (“The subjective Factor”) / 1984 Melkweg Award for Reality Research, Amsterdam (for lifetime achievement) / 1993 Special Jury Prize, Minsk Women’s Film Festival, Nestor Almendros Award, New York, and 1995 Special Award of the Festival Internacional De Cine Realizado Por Mujeres, Madrid (“Liberators Take Liberties”) / 1985 Golden Bear and Silver Award at Deutscher Filmpreis (“No. 1 – From Reports of the Guard & Patrol Services”), i.a.
CLAUDIA RICHARZ is an experimental and documentary film maker, and a mother of two sons.
In 1978 she co-founded “bildwechsel”, an independent cultural and media center for women in Hamburg. In the late 1990s, together with Carl-Ludwig Rettinger, she realized the documentary series “Abnehmen in Essen” for WDR/arte, and was awarded the Grimme Prize. Her feature film “Vulva 3.0” (in collaboration with Ulrike Zimmermann) celebrated its world premiere at the 2014 Berlinale.
During her studies at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Helke Sander was one of her professors.
