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Helke Sander is a German feminist film director and writer.
Sander attended a drama school in Hamburg. While married to Finnish writer Markku Lahtela, with whom she had a son, she worked as director at the worker's theatre and for Finnish television. She returned to Berlin in 1965.
From 1966 to 1969, she studied at the newly founded film school 'Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie'. Sanders' work in cinema is very closely linked to her political engagement as a feminist. In 1968, she co-founded the Aktionsrat zu Befreiung der Frauen. In September 1968, she participated at the conference of the Socialist Students Association. Her speech, in which she criticized her male colleagues for their sexist attitudes, was yelled at.
Together with Claudia von Aleman, she organized the feminist film conference 'Erste internationale Frauenfilmseminar' which took place in 1973 in Berlin. In 1974, she founded Frauen und Film, the first feminist European film journal, which she edited until 1981. Her film The All-Around Reduced Personality is among the most important German feminist films of the 1970s. Her 1992 film, BeFreier und BeFreite, on rape committed by soldiers of the Red Army was very controversial.
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