Subjektitüde (1967)

A concise blast of feminist film making, Sander's first film is a tense yet playful four minute short that dissects a typical urban scene at a bus stop on a busy street in Berlin. Sander adopts a "subjective" camera style, simulating the viewpoints of different individuals, whose inner thoughts are voiced over the soundtrack. As she approaches the bus stop, a young woman ponders the consequences of lowering the voting age to ten years old. This political question is interrupted when her eyes and thoughts drift toward two separate young men who have taken a obvious interest in her. In her thoughts heard over the images, she coolly and critically dismisses the men for their masculine posturing and superficiality. But then the film cuts to the sexist and objectifying perspective of those men, who completely fail to recognize the woman's subjectivity. Before the aggressively charged encounter between the three individuals forces the woman to flee into a taxi, a montage of their perspectives highlights how the experience of the city is strongly determined by gender, which thoroughly permeates all subjectivity.