Director's Portrait:

By whichever standard you measure the achievements of New German Cinema, one individual accomplishment stands out over others: the remarkable career of Helma Sanders-Brahms. Indeed, given the 26 Autorenfilm credits to her name over the past three decades, she has risen steadily in the ranks to become Germany's best known, most acclaimed, and internationally awarded woman film director. No other woman filmmaker has been honored with Germany's highest film award: the coveted Golden Shell, given to Heinrich in 1977. No other Autorin has molded the destiny of the burgeoning cine-feminist movement more than she - and that on thematic content alone in critically acclaimed festival entries. And no other German woman filmmaker has been showered with so many distinguished artistic honors - among them, membership in Berlin's Academy of Fine Arts, recipient of France's Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and bearer of Japan's Yasue Yamamoto Award for Artistic Achievement in Film and Theatre.

Born 20 November 1940 in Emden, Helma Sanders-Brahms learned filmmaking first hand by assisting Italian directors Pier Paolo Pasolini and Sergio Corbucci. An autodidact by choice as well as necessity, she augmented this experience by collaborating with stage directors Ariane Mnouchkine and Luc Bondy on theatrical productions. Then, at 29, following a short stint as television announcer at WDR Cologne, she made Angelika Urban, Salesgirl, Engaged (1970), a 21-minute social documentary shot on 16mm that was awarded two prizes at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival. It paved the way for six more documentaries and telefeatures on social problems that, in turn, were influenced by the political climate of the turbulent 1960s and motivated by the reform movements of the 1970s.

"After dealing with social problems that affected me emotionally, but not directly, I wanted to present my own view of a changing society," Sanders-Brahms stated in an interview. The result was the breakthrough The Beach under the Pavement (1974), a low-budget feature film with improvised dialogue that saw two Berliner Schaubühne stage actors wrestling as a couple with the weary aftermath of the 1968 Student Rebellion and finding no way out of the dilemma. Singled out for multiple German Film Awards, it became a cult film in the feminist movement. Never prone to explore the same theme twice, she then skirted feminist concerns to focus on historical issues in Heinrich (1976), the award-winning portrait of Prussian poet-dramatist Heinrich von Kleist that placed her as a director in the forefront of the New German Cinema movement.

But the film that made Helma Sanders-Brahms internationally famous as a woman director with a personal signature was Germany, Pale Mother (1980), a personal account of how her parents, particularly her mother, dealt with tragic events during the immediate postwar years. "I wanted to write the history of my country from my own viewpoint" - a declaration of principle from which she has seldom strayed up to the present in both feature films and documentaries.

Showered with festival prizes and international awards, her «uvre has been recognized by international critics (among them Variety's David Stratton) and fostered by key festivals around the world: No Mercy, No Future (Cannes 1981), The Future of Emily (Tokyo 1984), Laputa (Montreal 1986), Apple Trees (Cannes 1992), and My Heart Is Mine Alone (Berlinale 1997). Helma Sanders-Brahms has served as Vice President of the Media Group of the Cultural Council in the European Commission (1988-90), in addition to turns as jury member at some 50 international festivals. And her essays on cinema and theatre are equally respected in the literary arena.