Helke Sander

Helke Sander (born January 31, 1937, in Berlin) is a German feminist film director, author, actress, activist, and educator. She is known primarily for her documentary work and contributions to the women's movement in the seventies and eighties. Sander's work is characterized by her emphasis of the experimental over the narrative arc. Sander is considered to have started the "new" feminist movement in Germany with her passionate speech at the Socialist German Students Conference. A lot of Sander's work is about portraying female perspectives and showing the every day struggles that women go through to survive. 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. Where women are true, they break things." Sander's work is concerned with the breakage of conventional ideas and forms. " Early life and education Born in Berlin, Sander was living in Dresden during the firestorm bombing of Dresden during WWII. By the time she graduated from high school, she had been to 15 schools around Germany. She received her Abitur in Remscheid in 1957 and went on to study acting at the Ida Ehre School in Hamburg.