Nach grauen Tagen | After Frey Days (00:05:14), Germany 2003

Poem: Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973), Director: Ralf Schmerberg

Performed by Jürgen Vogel, Anna Böttcher 

A large family on a Sunday afternoon. The atmosphere is explosive. The only hope for escaping the hectic is a huge blue balloon. 

Ralf Schmerberg (Germany 1965) is an artist and filmmaker. His oeuvre includes feature films, documentaries, short films, video and public media installations, social gatherings and photographic works. Over the course of his career, Schmerberg has increasingly invested his creative enthusiasm into mobilizing large groups of people into modern forms of participatory art events that combine social exchange and action. Projects like dropping knowledge or The Table of Free Voices, or films like Problema or Poem for instance, all opened up a large-scale dialogue and sustained reflection. He has received a Grimme Award and a Cinema for Peace Award, as well as being nominated for an Emmy. His works Wind and Under Five have been included in the archives of the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Schmerberg lives and works in Berlin.

https://triggerhappyproductions.com/directors/ralf-schmerberg/

My mamma is bossies | My mum's bonkers (00:03:22), Südafrika 2017

Poem: Jeanne Goosen (1938-2020), Director: Naomi van Niekerk

A melancholic poetry film in black and white with sand and silhouettes. About the loss of a mother and a flawed relationship between daughter and child. Inspired by Jeanne Goosen's eponymous poem, recited by the well-known South-African actress Elize Cawood, to the aria O mia babbino caro from Puccini's opera Gianni Schicci, in a legendary performance by Maria Callas (1955).

Naomi van Niekerk (South Africa 1984) is a hybrid-media artist and works in film, theatre, installation and print-making. As a stop-motion animator, she breathes life into inanimate materials albeit objects or liquid powder that is animated frame by frame using a camera. She creates short films of haunting poignancy based on sensitive interpretations of stark, South African narrative poems that speak to her. These short films have been screened globally and received widespread acclaim.

They are there but I am not | 他們在那裡而我不在 (00:06:57), Taiwan 2009

Poet and Director: Ye Mimi

We experience a lot of poems as a record of real life. Through the specific Taiwanese backdrop, the poetry film illustrates a series of moments to approach the concept of time, which is not as concrete as we are taught. As a poet, the filmmaker presents her ideas on the nature of reality, existence, what is there and what is not there.

Ye Mimi is an award-winning Taiwanese poet and filmmaker. A graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Department at Dong Hwa University and the MFA Film Department at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is the author of three volumes of poetry and has internationally exhibited several of her poetry films. Her poetry films are delicate ruminations of life, which contemplate the ordinary and the bizarre, and the existential nature of all things. Through collaging her words and images, she improvises a new landscape trying to erase the border between poetry and image making.

If I go out walking with my dead friends | Αν βγω περίπατο με τις νεκρές μου φίλες (00:05:21), Germany/Greece 2021

Poem: Ritta Boumi-Pappa (1906-1984), Director: Aleksandra Ćorović & Alkistis Kafetzi

Director's note

The poem "If I go out walking with my dead friends" belongs to the book "A thousand murdered girls" which was published in 1964. The book consists of 65 poems, each named after a woman who was sentenced to death for participating in the Greek Resistance against the Nazis. "If I go out walking with my dead friends" is a humble memorial for the female heroines mentioned in Papa's verses but also for today's freedom fighters. It rings the bell in the consciences of people, pointing out the risk of suppression of freedom within a decaying social system. The past and the present are connected through a visualized dramaturgy of associative patterns. The human body becomes a canvas on which mankind paints its struggles and battles. Its reality is caught in confrontation between projected values and societal demands. How do society's proceedings reflect on the individual experience?

Aleksandra Ćorović (1986 Germany), studied drama at the Music and Arts University of Vienna, where she lives. Together with Aristoteles Chaitidis she produced several theatre plays since 2016. She currently performs at Burgtheater in "Die Bakchen", directed by Ulrich Rasche, in "Oxytocin Baby" at Schauspielhaus in Vienna and in "Elektra" at Berliner Ensemble, Berlin, both plays directed by Rieke Süßkow. She received several international awards for her performances. This Poetry Film is her directorial debut.

Alkistis Kafetzi is a filmmaker and video artist who lives in Berlin. She studied Theatre at the University of Athens and film editing at the Institute of Professional Training AKMI. During her studies she worked as an editor on short films and documentaries. Since 2012 she has been collaborating with the Institute of Experimental Arts and with the director Taso Sagri as a video artist for their theatrical productions. She made her directorial debut 2016 with the short documentary "Unterwegs", which was screened at Tirana International Film Festival. Her work has been shown in several art exhibitions and film festivals in Europe. 

https://www.alkistiskafetzi.com/

Robin (00:03:24), Israel 2014

Poem: Emily Dickinson(1830-1886), Directed and animation: by Yuval and Merav Nathan

If I can stop one heart from breaking, | I shall not live in vain; | If I can ease one life the aching, | Or cool one pain, | Or help one fainting robin | Unto his nest again, | I shall not live in vain.

Yuval and Merav Nathan specialize in producing and directing animated films in stop motion, 3D compositing and others, using a wide range of styles and techniques. They have a studio which is well known for its creativity and ground breaking originality, and includes in its portfolio a number of projects which received worldwide recognition and won a variety of international prizes.

https://animationhome.net/

Portrait of a woman (00:04:50), Polen 2020

Poem: Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012), Director: Natalia Durszewicz

The "female portrait" is made of social expectations, stereotypes and cultural constructs. The protagonist must continuously reject the roles imposed on her and adjust to the views of others. Finally, the woman decides to liberate herself from the surrounding limitations. Will she manage to escape? This animated interpretation of a poem by Wisława Szymborska, Nobel Prize Winner 1996, was painted using the palette of red shades, such as the colour of her lipstick, rose petals or blood drops. The feelings and emotions of the character are complemented by the depictions of nature, while deep colours and intensifying music create the atmosphere of tension and unease.

Natalia Durszewicz (Polen 1995) is graduate of Animated Film and Special Effects at the National Filmschool in Lotz, Poland and of the Leon Wyczółkowski's High School of Fine Arts. Her film The Beasts Around Us was nominated for Cinéfondation award at the 74th Cannes Film Festival, 2021. 

Vacancy | Leerstelle (00:04:30), Germany 2016

Poems: Hilde Domin (1909-2006), Director: Urte Zintler

An animated film - Hand-drawn animation

"One must be able to move but also be as still as a tree: as the trees have rooted themselves in the ground; as we stand fixed despite the pulling away of the landscape." (Hilde Domin) 

a woman, a road, the outland 

The non-narrative animated film is a poetic debate with the issue of "HOME" and the experience of the outland as a new home. A collage of fragments of Hilde Domin´s poems and a concentration and overlay of sketchy drawings and sound elements - always incomplete, always close to disappearance. It describes the search for an inner place of calm - a timeless space of deceleration.

Urte Zintler (Germany 1975), after her training in classical animation at LTAM in Luxembourg, she studied animation film at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and UCA Farnham in England and free graphics at the HGB Leipzig. In 2015 she founded the studio "Federfisch Animation" in Leipzig, a free space where she can live the balancing act between art and commerce. She works on feature films with animation, computer animation and analogue oil-on-glass animation, as well as on TV series, short films and commercials, mainly as a character animator and supervisor. Her artistic work is characterized by a minimalist, sensitive design, which despite all its simplicity develops a great intensity and impressionability.

Paint Me A Painting (00:07:24), Israel 2015

Poem: Hedva Harechavi, Director: Jasmine Kainy

Based on a poem by acclaimed Israeli poet Hedva Harechavi. Three generations of women try to communicate with one another. The grandmother and mother are finding it difficult to get over the anger and weight of things past. Their hope of reconnection lies with the granddaughter.

Jasmine Kainy (California 1968), grew up mostly in Tel- Aviv, Israel. She started as a radio and print journalist in Tel Aviv, and in 1989 moved to California and studied Radio & Television at SFSU. After graduating with honors, she moved back to Tel Aviv and has been working as a director for a wide range of TV channels ever since. 

Standard Time (00:03:00), Germany 2017

Poem: Daniela Seel, Director: Hanna Slak

"Standard Time is a timeless, self-referential meditation on the power of communication to transmute and, at times, distort. Its flawless blend of text, sound and images suggests a worldview both deeply rooted and universal, shamanistic and apophatic. It does what all great poems should do in suggesting more than it says and leaving the viewer's mind abuzz with creative energy and new ideas. Addressing the poetic possibilities of time as it does, it can almost be seen as a film about poetry film itself." Τhe Jury of Weimar Poetry Film Award 2017

Hanna Slak is a Slovenian film director, multimedia artist, writer and producer, born 1975 in Warsaw, studied at the Film Academy in Ljubljana and now based in Berlin. She glides between the visual and the textual and between several native languages. Among the awards for her work are the Silver Bear at the Berlinale 2014 for Short Film Laborat.

Burgundy Dress | Φόρεμα μπορντό (00:04:52), Greece 2023, 

Poet and Director: Marianna Nikolaou

Burgundy Dress is a multimedia video poem created, directed, and edited by the poet and writer Marianna Nikolaou and accompanied by original music by Octavatar. The project was created to address contemporary feminine issues through self-referentiality and intertextuality. The roles imposed by society and culture on women, marriage and parenting as societal dictations that restrict professional upgrowth opportunities and artistic expression and creativity for them, as well as female body fragmentation and fashion commands that define the gender as a pleasure vessel, are some of the themes that contribute to the project's problematic.

The creator of the Burgundy Dress, having passed through multiple domains, found that this form of interdisciplinary poetic performance has the power to give women a voice to articulate their deeper wishes, needs, dreams, and desires despite the unfriendly circumstances they might experience.

The Burgundy Dress wishes to become the motive to change, "A DRILL ON THE GLASS CEILING".

Marianna Nikolaou is a Greek poet, writer and creative writing and theatre-in-education animator for children and adults, holding creativity workshops and groups. She has published a number of poems in Greek and international literary magazines, and has been awarded several prizes in literary contests for her short stories, poems and fairytales. She is a phd candidate on ancient Greek drama and its modern applications in today's education. 

https://instagram.com/marianna.nikolaou1?igshid=ZDdkNTZiNTM= 

Octavatar is a producer of instrumental music for movies and videogames. After having studied musical theory and harmony, he began to work on music and recording in 2010. He composes, records and mixes music in his home studio. He is a proficient user of various recording softwares and instruments. 

instagram.com/octavatar