Helma Sanders-Brahms

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An overflowing Sci Fi Opera as well as a nightmare about a society totally lost in consumption.
In the center of the action, a resistant woman fights against this system when her partner seems to disappear in a monsterous machine, that was chosen by the director as a metaphor for the ultimate consequences of TV as well as for the entertainment industry.
Helma Sanders-Brahms put a lot of her own experiences into the plot.
– from zweitausendeins film lexikon, original text in germanRead More »

The Future of Emily (Flügel und Fasseln) is the work of Helma Sanders-Brahms, one of the original New German Cinema directors of the early 1970s. Unlike some of her more caustic films about the German experience, this is a relatively conventional drama of generational jealousy and bitterness, a picture that could well be a stage play. It’s also reminiscent of American movies about strong women in conflict, pitting famous German star Hildegard Knef against French actress Brigitte Fossey. Knef’s big break came with the very first post-war German success The Murderers Are Among Us. Fossey’s best-known picture remains René Clément’s Forbidden Games, where she played a Parisian tot orphaned by the war. The film’s original German title translates as “Wings and Shackles”, which apparently refers to the predicament of its movie star heroine Isabelle, a woman adored by fans but hobbled by family disapproval.Read More »

Doctors say that Veronika, a woman in her 20s, is schizophrenic. She is compliant, which makes her an easy target for men. She’s religious, believing she is God’s favorite child; she searches for Jesus. She has sent a letter to a filmmaker suggesting her life as the subject for a movie. We see her raped than take up with a series of men she believes are Jesus, each willing or insistent on sex. A young man with his own crisis of faith invites her to join a cult. We see her involuntarily committed to an asylum from time to time where medication and constraints await. Her wealthy parents are helpless. Will a medical professional ever talk to her? If one did, would it help?Read More »

Malgortzata and Paul have a rendezvous in West Berlin to spend some time together before she has to go back to Warsaw and he returns to his wife and daughter. The two talk, disagree, argue, make-up, quarrel and talk some more.Read More »

The life of Jewish Expressionist poet and performance artist, Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945), told chronologically in vignettes given context by archival footage of turn-of-the-century Germany, World War I, and the ascent of the Third Reich. Her poetry often comprises the soundtrack. We see her in relation to men: her first husband, whom she leaves after her son is born; artists like Chagall and Franz Marc; an older muse and then a second husband; and, Gottfried Benn (1886 – 1956), physician and poet. Benn’s life is also chronicled: homosexual encounters, his attraction to Else and the Berlin scene, and his politics. Her poems addressed to him define this cultural moment.
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A biopic by Helma Sanders-Brahm on the life of the poet and dramatist Heinrich von Kleist. The film is based upon his letters, documents and literary works. This film won the Deutscher Filmpreis in 1977 making Sanders-Brahm the first female director to win it.Read More »

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When the church discovers that Josefa is pregnant, she is sentenced to death by decapitation. Her lover Jeronimo is jailed before he can rescue her. When fate intervenes in the form of a massive earthquake, the two lovers have no idea what is in store for them.Read More »

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In her film Germany, Pale Mother Sanders-Brahms depicts her childhood in Germany during and after WWII. In order to survive, mother (Lene) and child (Anna) form a self-sufficient bond which excludes the father when he returns from war. The film portrays a child’s resilience in the face of such war trauma as death, and, especially for girls, fear of assault. Anna emulates Lene’s ability to transcend suffering through her will to survive and through narrative, the focus of this paper. Lene’s reciting of the Grimms’ “The Robber Bridegroom” fairy tale, in which the heroine flees and defeats her potential assailant by telling her story, enables them to overcome their suffering as war victims and inspires Anna, the filmmaker, to narrate their story, to become the subject not the object of her life story, and to transcend the past. Postwar scenes depict the difficulty of returning to traditional family roles because of the father’s wartime absence and the resulting abuse from a disillusioned, frustrated husband/father, the postwar “enemy”. There is a role reversal in which Anna becomes the mother’s caretaker which reaches its climax in the final sceneRead More »