All of Renate Sami’s films—short and long—avoid being labeled by genre. Renate trusts her strong inner voice to find each film's own form. If I want to decribe her films, I need all the words at once: essay, poetry, documentary, diary, music, silence, language. The three films shown in the second program give an idea of her wide range: We All Die..., When You See a Rose and The Protection Foil are all quite different from one another. We All Die... was the first film I saw by Renate in 1990 when Maria Lang and I organized a filmseries based on our question:  “Who were the first women filmmakers in the ‘New German Film‘?“ and invited Renate with this work.Out of this developed our long filmmaker friendship. In 1994 I asked ten friends—filmmakers and non-filmmakers—to make a film about a season, and Renate surprised me with her beautiful, lyrical flower-film When You See a Rose. Earlier, in 1982, Renate had made The Protection Foil, a performance-film in one take, with visible film music and an anarchistic attitude where form and content create something new.

In 1997 Renate and I started our monthly film series Filmsamstag (Film Saturday) together with the filmmaker Theo Thiesmeier. We showed films that were important to us. Our discussions were passionate and led us to unusual programing, ignoring genres—much like Renate’s own filmmaking and independent thinking. – Ute Aurand