German Language Poetry Films
We can only enter a few of the many outstanding into the competition each year. The program shows an additional selection of German movies and underscores the importance poetry film has gained in the short film world.

Na?
Director: Binbin Zhang
Germany, 5:38 min
The film is narrated by a House, which has memories like a human. All the moments that happened in the space would be contained. Some moments happened only once; some of them happened like in a time loop. The house tells us what it saw and felt. It keeps all the traces left by its residents. All these traces may have drifted or landed anywhere or even have mixed with each other.

Eigentlich ist das kein Film
Director: Patrick Müller
Author: Marco Kerler
Germany 2018, 4:42 min
A poem, a kaleidoscope, and life itself.

schmelzen
Director & Author: Silke Körber
Germany 2019, 10:23 min
„When boundaries get crossed – how do you notice that?“ The essayistic short film “schmelzen” (Engl. “melting”) deals with scars, traumas, and tomato sauce, raising many of these questions without providing answers. I look for images and words for what is not immediate, often hidden, although it escapes and crosses lines.

Revision of Evidence
Director: Sophie Salzer
Germany 2019, 7:51 min
An independent narrative carved from fluid movements, jump cuts, gestures and still images. Within a space of sculpted light, desire and disdain, attraction and repulsion, intertwine to form the film‘s sparse choreographed economy.

liedvoll, deutschyzno moja
Director: Lukas Beier
Author: Dagmara Kraus
Germany 2018, 4 min
“A million words could just be silent”, the feeling when you slide into the depths of the hate comments on social media. The film “liedvoll, deutschyzno moja” was presented at the 2018 Zebra Festival and created by Lukas Beier in the seminar “between words and images” from Reiner Nachtwey and Dr. Kathrin Tillmanns. The narrator fights his way through the word worlds of “liedvoll, deutschyzno moja”, accompanied by echoes and music. The verses by Dagmara Kraus are found in a social media look, supplemented by gifs.

Im Toten Park
Director: Moritz Liewerscheidt
Author: Dieter Liewerscheidt
Germany 2019, 8 min
“In the Dead Park” tells the story of a poet in a small town in former West Germany – by reference to some of his poems.

Landschaft
Director: Sascha Conrad
Author: Ulrike A. Sandig
Germany 2018, 3:23 min
This short film is based on a poem about female identity in German poetry. How does landscape shape language? How does the story go? Does language have a gender when it is poetry? A reflection in verse, sound, and beats by the poetry band Landschaft, based in Lviv (Ukraine) and Berlin (Germany).

Aus Gold modelliert die Nacht
Director & Author: Marion Brillowska
Germany 1998-2018, 3:05 min
Out of gold forms the night
I draw myself / With straight lines / My nose is the entrance / My eyes are windows / My face is a wall / My forehead is the carpet / My ears are labyrinths / My mouth is a tunnel / My hair is a forest / My shoulder is a church / My belly is the dessert / My breasts are the mountains / My pelvis is the bush / My back is the ocean / My legs are snakes / My feet are kids

dieses regionale Getreide
Director: Holger Mohaupt
Author: Daniel Falb
Germany 2019, 01:40 min
When writing becomes reading and reading turns into an experience. ‘das regionale getreide’ (This Local Crop) is a phonetic adventure of the unknown complemented by the vocal cords of an 11-year-old girl in Scotland.

Geschichte aus blauer hand
Animation: Alma Weber
Author: Olaf Weber
Germany 2020, 1:30 min
“A story from a blue hand” is a quick visit to Anna, the flower, the whole. Overdrawn with a black felt-tip pen and underlined with a cello bow.

Loreley
Director: Marina L. Kanzian
Author: Heinrich Heine
Germany 2019, 2min
A melancholy poetry film about the seductive power of nature and the enchanting aura of old legends.

Waldsamkeit
Director: Claus Wagner
Author: Heinrich Heine
Germany 2019, 8:13 min
In Heinrich Heine’s great ballad “Waldeinsamkeit,” published in 1851 in “Romanzero,” perhaps one of the poet’s most personal volumes of poetry, the narrator recognizes that it has lost the “wreath” on its head, thus its former playmates in the forest, the animals and creatures no longer recognizing it as one of their own. Youth has protected it from understanding and cognition. […] In collaboration with musician and experimental filmmaker Claus Wagner, a film version of “Waldeinsamkeit” was created, which focuses on face and voice. Together, they are the transmitters of expression, but also face-value of the lyrical I’s encounter with the animals in the forest.
Nora Gomringer, April 2019

Warum, warum ist die Banane krumm (How many beans make five?)
Director & Author: Kuesti Fraun
Germany 2018, 02:13 min
The question for all the answers