In 1967, Helke Sander became a member of the Socialist German Student Union. The situation of women in society was not an issue there, not even among women. Together with Marianne Herzog, she founded the Action Council for the Liberation of Women and the children’s shops in Berlin. Unpaid care work, too few childcare options, hardly any support from men in raising children – these issues are still relevant today, many years later. At the SDS delegate congress in September 1968, she declared in her legendary ‘tomato speech’ that social change is not possible without the liberation of women. The private is political. The men commented on her speech with derisive laughter. But the new German women’s movement was beginning.
Today, at over 80 years old, Helke Sander is tidying up. The dress she loved to wear as a young woman when she lived in Finland in the early 1960s, the prehistoric Venus statues with large breasts and voluminous bellies that celebrate women as mothers, and of course copies of the magazine Women and filmwhich she founded in 1974. “Cleaning up also has an inner meaning, something transcendent.”
Violence against women and their oppression by patriarchal structures are the theme of her life.
(Documentary by Claudia Richarz. D 2023, 82 min.)
For the subsequent film discussion we expect: Karola Gramannfilm curator, founder and long-time director of the cinematheque “Asta Nielsen”. The moderator is Carola Benninghoven, naxos.Kino.
