Join us for a series of film screenings to celebrate International Women's Day on 7, 8 and 15 March 2025 and to pay tribute to German feminist film maker Helke Sander!

feminism, filmmaking & art: A tribute to Helke Sander

“If they take away your sword, grab the club” – so goes the title of German feminist filmmaker Helke Sander’s foreword to the inaugural issue of Frauen und Film (“Women and Film”) in 1974, the first-ever European journal dedicated to the work of female filmmakers and also the challenges they faced (and continue to face) in a male-dominated “industry”.

We are delighted to announce a very special programme, presented by Lingnan University's Centre of Film and Creative Industries and the German Consulate General Hong Kong, with support from Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art and Eaton House. The programme has been carefully curated by Hong Kong film critic Clarence Tsui, and includes post-screening Zoom talks with the renowned Helke Sander, Claudia Richarz and Arsenal's artistic director Stefanie Schulte Strathaus.
There will also be a panel discussion with local filmmakers Oliver Chan, Jessey Tsang and scholar, film festival curator and interdisciplinary artist Sonia Wong to discuss Sander's work in the context of Hong Kong cinema.

At once a tribute to Sander and an extension to the conversations and debates the filmmaker kickstarted with her work, this programme is designed to introduce Hong Kong audiences to this pioneering artist through two of her most trail-blazing films as well as a documentary about her life.

Screening details

THE GERMANS AND THEIR MEN – REPORT FROM BONN
(Helke Sander, BRD 1989)

Classification IIB (“NOT SUITABLE FOR YOUNG PERSONS AND CHILDREN / 青少年及兒童不宜”)

Date: 07.03.2025 | Time: 13:30 | Location: Room MBG22, Lingnan University | Admission: Free
post-screening Q&A with director Helke Sander and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, artistic director Arsenal Institut für Film und Videokunst Berlin (online), moderator: Clarence Tsui

Humorous in her approach but steadfastly serious in her message, Helke Sander blends reality and fiction by sending actor Renée Felden to investigate the toxic underbelly of modern masculinity by talking to men from various backgrounds about neckties, history and statistics on sexual violence.

Register here: http://bit.ly/helkesander-0307

ALL-ROUND REDUCED PERSONALITY – REDUPERS
(Helke Sander, BRD 1978)

Classification I

Date: 08.03.2025 | Time: 14:30 | Location: Music Room, Eaton HK Hotel | Admission: Free
post-screening panel: filmmakers Oliver Chan, Jessey Tsang, and scholar/festival curator/interdisciplinary artist Sonia Wong, moderator: Clarence Tsui

In Helke Sander’s first feature film, a professional photographer (played by the director herself) struggles to accommodate her artistic ambitions with her obligations as a single mother – with all the drama unfolding under the looming, divisive shadow of the Berlin Wall.

Register here: https://helke-sander.eventbrite.hk

HELKE SANDER: CLEANING HOUSE
(Claudia Richarz, D 2023)

Date: 15.03.2025 | Time: 16:30 | Location: Screening Theatre, Eaton HK Hotel | Admission: Free
post-screening Q&A with Helke Sander and director Claudia Richarz (online), moderator: Clarence Tsui

Taking stock of her affairs and even preparing for her own funeral, Helke Sander revisits the milestones in her creative and personal life through a mix of new interviews and archive footage in what promises to be an essential primer of an essential filmmaker of our times. (ct)

Register here: https://helke-sander.eventbrite.hk

(Program might be subjected to changes)

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About Helke Sander

Helke Sander has dedicated the past six decades to challenging patriarchal social structures, with a range of approaches including filmmaking, writing, teaching and direct political activism. Her work offers a critique of the marginalisation of women in both public and private spheres.

Her work has been anchored as much by theory as by lived experience: as a young mother confronting unsympathetic workplace and pedagogic practices at the German Film and Television Academy, as a left-wing activist calling out the misogynist views of her fellow (male) socialists, and as an artist whose ideas and projects were repeatedly overlooked by both the establishment and her peers. She only got to complete her first feature when she was 41.

Now 88, Sander remains very active and vocal about gender-based oppression in Germany and beyond. Filmmakers, cinephiles and activists are rediscovering her legacy by revisiting her films (as in the screenings of THE GERMANS AND THEIR MEN – REPORT FROM BONN at the Berlinale in 2024) or through new documentaries (such as Claudia Richarz’s biographical HELKE SANDER: CLEANING HOUSE; or Vibeke Løkkeberg’s The Long Road to the Director’s Chair, which chronicles The First International Women’s Film Seminar, an event co-organised by Sander and Claudia von Alemann at the Arsenal cinema in 1973).