Films by Antje Lass

Germany 2019, 93 min
by Halina Dyrschka

How can an artist discover abstraction by the beginning of the 20th century and nobody is noticing? A woman, misjudged and concealed, rocks the art world with her mind-blowing oeuvre. Hilma af Klint was a pioneer creating her first abstract painting in 1906, four years before Vassily Kandinsky. But why was she ignored? Why are her paintings not available on the market? This first film on her is about her life and work, the role of women in art history and the discovery of an art scandal. Her quest for meaning in life and a boundless thinking led into a timeless, outstanding oeuvre.“‘Beyond the Visible’ bristles with the excitement of discovery and also with the impatience that recognition has taken so long,” A.O. Scott wrote. “It refreshes the eyes and the mind.”

Germany 2014, 79 min
by Claudia Richarz, Ulrike Zimmermann

We live in hypersexualised times. The press, adverts and TV are constantly putting naked women and their genitalia on display. But many women are still deeply prudish when it comes to the relationship with their own body. In public we see airbrushed, de-individualised anatomies which conform to the standards of attractiveness used by the porn industry. The ideal image of the smooth, perfectly shaped vulva with symmetrical labia has little to do with the actual shape of most female genitalia. The resultant insecurity many women feel about their own bodies has proven to be a gold-mine for cosmetic genital surgery which promises to manufacture the perfect vagina via the surgeon’s scalpel. With their comprehensive and unflustered research into the history of this particular aspect of the female anatomy in the 21st century, the directors shed light on every facet of the matter in hand, from sex education to censorship, from the airbrushing of ‘misshapen’ labia in pornographic images to the work of activists against female genital mutilation - and in doing so celebrate the diversity of the female body.