Read Me Goodbye

Direction: Holger Mohaupt

Text: Wilhelm Busch (1832–1908)

Germany/UK 2023, 2:35 min

Shaky shoes on the pavement, window frames on a train, dream-like sketches of a fragmented reality emerge and disappear in the viewfinder. The filmmaker is taken on an unexpected journey with his mother, she is reading to him from his old primary school book. It is a farewell to their past and a life they once shared.

The Polar Caps of Memory

Direction: Joachim Hofmann

Text: Michael Augustin

Germany 2021, 2:12 min

Memory has a polar cap made of vanilla ice cream. The beautiful cold. The hot tongue. Oh, let me lick the North Pole’s vanilla. And I think of feet in winter boots soaked with snow, of frozen toes, red ears, the lost glove on the slope of the dike, blue lips, my little sister screeching, the icy river bank, the sledge tracks, thousandfold, the soundtrack of days which are by far too short, of days with far too little light. That is the South Pole of memory.

Geheimratsecken

Direction: Micha Kunze

Text: Leah Weigand, Marco Michalzik

Germany 2023, 6:16 min

Two poets, sharing one goal: creating the illusion of perfect lives. They strive to divert each other’s attention to their achievements, their glossy exteriors, and their accolades. Despite their efforts to conceal their insecurities and flaws, they inevitably begin to unveil the truths hidden beneath their masks. Gradually, they allow light to shine on aspects of their lives they had hoped would remain undiscovered.

Aber hi!

Direction: Sascha Conrad

Text: Ulrike Almut Sandig

Germany 2023, 4:19 min

ABER HI! is a poetry film about the musical grace of language in decades of fury and fear. The experimental short is based on a poem by German poet Ulrike Almut Sandig in which she quoted the Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker (1924 – 1921) who has lived through WWII and the Cold War. In the first weeks of the russian war against Ukraine the Ukrainian poet and musician Grigory Semenchuk, being under heavy attack himself, has translated her poem into electronic music. Unable to leave Ukraine, he and guest musician Vsevolod Sadovyj (Duda) contributed to the film in a green screen studio in Lviv, Ukraine while the rest of the crew was shooting in Denmark. Thus, ABER HI is also a bit about how poetry can bring us together despite wartimes.

Mothercity

Direction & Text: Schubert-Stegemann; Mirella Drosten


Text: Schubert-Stegemann

Germany 2023, 7:50 min

In “Mothercity”, the aging urban space of the Ruhr district city of Dortmund becomes an analogy of the ageing female body. The film traces a process of remembering. The text as a stream of consciousness makes the thoughts of the protagonists, who move back and forth between past and future, audible. They reflect on the relationship between body and urban space. Two old protagonists seek a dialog with their younger selves.

Mementos

Direction: Thomas Adamicka

Germany 2024, 10:00 min

Love letters, photo collages and the sounds of a bygone era, interwoven according to a musical principle. Three women read the interlaced texts. A clown signs them. And the audience is reminded of the time when they still wrote and received handwritten love letters.

Goldene Schuhe und ein blaues Klavier: Else Lasker-Schüler

Direction: Lucia Schmidt

Text: Christine Hansmann; Else Lasker-Schüler

Germany 2023, 10:00 Min

Animated shortfilm about the life and poetry of German Expressionist poet Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945) whose life was marked by war, poverty and flight from rising fascism, followed by exile; her poetry also shows her colorful imagination, her artistic resistance, and constant yearning for home.

ömpf

Direction & Text: Kuesti Fraun

Germany 2022, 1:00 min

A look back at the debate about mandatory vöccination in Germany.