How something develops – Sabine Herpich’s films on artistic work

Personal Focus | SABINE HERPICH

How something develops Sabine Herpich’s films on artistic work

This year’s GEGENkino personal focus is dedicated to the German documentary filmmaker and editor Sabine Herpich (*1973). Her short and medium-length as well as her feature-length films have been guests at well-known festivals with a documentary focus such as the Berlinale Forum, DOK Leipzig and the Duisburger Filmwoche, and she has already been written about on Mubi Notebook – and yet her works, produced mostly with her own money, have so far been under the radar for a wider cinema audience. Herpich’s films, which in her words were made “on the side, without time or pressure to succeed and almost always without money”, are all impressively directed in a straightforward manner, caring and, since DAVID, have been determined by a theme that accompanies many of us in our everyday lives: by the need to create something that has to do with oneself, by creativity and its (rocky) paths. 

Herpich’s gentle studies, which accompany individuals in a restrained and observant manner, can be understood as a large cycle, as a group of works dedicated to the processes of artistic work and to people working artistically. The films do this without an explanatory voice-over and with only sparse, spontaneously curious enquiries from behind the camera, which is operated by Herpich herself. Her works lack the narrative voice typical of television reportage that “explains” something to us. In contrast, the aim is to discover something together with us, to grasp a process sensuously – be it the production and properties of abstract sculptures by a Berlin shoemaker (DAVID), the process of applying layers of colour for weeks on a painting (AN IMAGE BY ALEKSANDER GUDALO), the pencil and coloured pencil strokes that eventually come together to form a work full of detail and exuberant imagination (ART COMES FROM THE BEAK THE WAY IT HAS GROWN) or the lengthy tinkering involved in working on a music album, from rehearsals to studio recordings (BARBARA MORGENSTERN: DOING IT FOR LOVE). 

While a conventional reportage compresses the time needed to create such works, Herpich’s documentary films allow us to immerse ourselves observing and listening to such processes in peace and without authorial guidance. The gentle calm that prevails in the Mosaik art workshop, for example, is transmitted directly to the audience. ART COMES FROM THE BEAK THE WAY IT HAS GROWN portrays artists with intellectual disabilities who put their imagination on paper with the help of the workshop staff. The film condenses nothing less than Herpich’s special view of art: her films are not about understanding in a conventional sense, but about capturing and preserving something that outsiders can never fully grasp, namely creativity, on film – when it flows and when it stalls. 

The retrospective will be complemented by the German premiere of Herpich’s latest miniature TASTENDER BLICK, in which a blind cultural mediator is accompanied in her work. Beyond that, we are bringing Herpich’s cycle into dialogue with a historical documentary and essay film that is important for the filmmaker with regard to her films on creative processes – and at the same time was shot by an icon of GEGENkino: with Harun Farocki’s (1944–2014) artist portrait AN IMAGE BY SARAH SCHUMANN. In addition to Sabine Herpich, who will be present on both days, we have art and film scholar Friederike Horstmann as a guest. Horstmann teaches, researches and writes about art and cinema. She has been teaching film history at the German Film and Television Academy since 2020 and has been a guest lecturer at the film studies department of FU Berlin since 2024. On the opening evening, she will give a lecture on Herpich’s special (film) view of art and artistic work processes.

Sat 13.09.25 Luru Kino
6 PM	DAVID DE 2016, D: SabineHerpich, 81’, german OV, DCP Lecture by Friederike Horstmann In presence of Sabine Herpich
8 PM	BARBARA MORGENSTERN: DOING IT FOR LOVE DE 2024, D: Sabine Herpich, 109’, OV with english subtitles, DCP In presence of Sabine Herpich
Sun 14.09.25 Luru Kino
7 PM	ULRIKE DAM IS WRITING DE 2020, R: Sabine Herpich, 13’, german OV, DCP AN IMAGE BY ALEKSANDER GUDALO DE 2018, R: Sabine Herpich, 45’, german OV, DCP AN IMAGE BY SARAH SCHUMANN DE 1978, R: Harun Farocki, 30’, OV with english subtitles ,DCP In presence of Sabine Herpich
9 PM	ART COMES FROM THE BEAK THE WAY IT HAS GROWN DE 2020, D: Sabine Herpich, 106’, OV with english subtitles, DCP TASTENDER BLICK AT/DE 2024, D: Sabine Herpich, Gregor Stadlober, 39’, german OV, DCP with audio description, German Premiere In presence of Sabine Herpich