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Claudia Richarz, born in 1955 in Troisdorf, initially studied at Ruhr-University Bochum, where she began to engage with photography and video art. In 1979, she co-founded the artists' project "bildwechsel, Kultur- und Medienzentrum für Frauen" in Hamburg, where she worked until 1986. She later completed a diploma in visual communication at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HfbK) in Hamburg, where Helke Sander was one of her professors.
In 1980, Richarz directed her first short film, "Fortunella," a documentary collage about a young woman longing for a fulfilled and happy life. Her two-minute experimental film "Endlich eine Prinzessin" (1985) won the 2nd prize at the Hamburg No Budget Short Film Festival in 1987. Over the following years, Richarz made numerous short and medium-length films, including the 27-minute documentary "Der Zug aus Leipzig" (1989, with Astrid Proll), which was screened at the Max Ophüls Festival, and the experimental film "Vorsicht Glatteis" (1990), an audio collage of traffic reports over images of nature.
However, her main focus has been on documentaries, such as "Die große Liebe" (1993), in which various people (including Hermine Huntgeburth and Peter Lohmeyer) discuss what "great love" means to them. She received the Grimme Award for her contribution to the ten-part Arte documentary "Abnehmen in Essen" (2000, with Carl-Ludwig Rettinger), which follows five obese women trying to lose weight. Another Grimme Award nomination followed for the documentary series "Samba für Singles" (2004, with Carl-Ludwig Rettinger), which follows eight singles who attend a dance class in search of a partner. She also collaborated with Carl-Ludwig Rettinger on the Arte documentary series "Delphinkinder" (2005), which portrays disabled children undergoing dolphin therapy in Spain.
Between 2012 and 2017, she and Ulrike Zimmermann produced several DVDs on the topics of sexuality, desire and body awareness. In this context, they also created the documentary film "Vulva 3.0. Zwischen Tabu und Tuning" ("Vulva 3.0", 2014), which premiered at the Berlinale 2014 Panorama section. Until 2020, Richarz also worked on various commercial projects for sagamedia Filmproduktion. Her television documentary "Wenn der Vierbeiner zum Chef wird. Die Hundetrainerin" (2019) was also produced during this time.
In 2022, Richarz began working on the documentary film "Helke Sander: Aufräumen" ("Helke Sander - Cleaning House", a cinematic portrait of her former professor, a central figure in the New Women's Movement and the New German Cinema . The film premiered at the International Women's Film Festival Dortmund+Köln 2023, where it won the Audience Award. Its regular theatrical release was in March 2024.