Helke Sander

Helke Sander (born January 31, 1937, in Berlin) is a German feminist film director, author, actor, activist, and educator.

Sander is considered to have started the "new" feminist movement in Germany with her passionate speech at the Socialist German Students Conference.

In her essay "Feminists and Film (1977)", Sander states the motivation for her work: "To put it in other terms: women's most authentic act today—in all areas including the arts—consists not in standardizing and harmonizing the means, but rather in destroying them.

Sander also directed and performed in Ernst Toller's play "Der deutsche Hinkemann and Grass' "Noch zehn Minuten bis Buffalo."

[2] In 1965 Sander returned to the BRD where she worked at the German Film and Television Academy as a reporter and translator struggling to support herself and her son.

Here she would go on to find the "Aktionsrat zur Befreiung der Frauen" (Action Council for the Liberation of Women) in January 1968, which started the movement for Kinderläden which converted shops into childcare centers.

Sander became very active in the Students' movement during this time and started the "Aktionsrat zur Befreiung der Frau" (Action Council for the Liberation of Women) in 1968.

[4] In 1968, she gave a powerful speech at the SDS (Socialist German Students) conference in Frankfurt where she stressed how women are only truly accepted in society when they "adapt."

When her male colleagues tried to ignore this plea and to return to business as usual, Sigrid Rüger hurled her famous tomato, and the second wave of the German women's movement was born.

[7] [8] Sander's critical eye towards postwar German culture was expanded in her 1984 satire on sexual politics, "Der Beginn aller Schrecken ist Liebe" (Love is the Beginning of All Terror) in which she stars.

[3] Sander is also an author and publicist for "Die Geschichten der drei Damen K" (The Three Women K) where stories about irony within heterosexual relationships are told from a female perspective.

[3] Helke Sander's work is characterized by the use of filters, which function as a visual cue to remind the audience of the subjectivity presented.

[7] Feminist interpretations Redupers posit that the Berlin Wall functions not only as a representation of the divide geographically, but also as a stand-in for the psychic and sexual differences between men and women.

Sander's portrayal shows Leftist males run the commune while women are relegated to domestic duties and are denied rights to speak out.

Her 1992 documentary film, BeFreier und BeFreite (Liberators Take Liberties), examines the mass rape of German women committed by soldiers of the Red Army at the end of World War II.