Winners of the Weimar Poetry Film Award 2016-2019
We recall some of the artistic highlights of four festival years with the previous Weimar Poetry Film Competitions’ winning films.

What about the law
Animation: Charles Badenhorst
Text: Adam Small
South Africa 2014, 3:14 min
2016 - Jury Award Best Poetry Film
This film is part of a series of short films of classical Afrikaans poems. This poem is an iconic work condemning segregation laws under Apartheid South Africa. It tells a story of a white woman who falls in love with a coloured man. It is a conversation between the woman, the man and the community about how the law is killing their love and ultimately takes their lives.

Steel and Air
Direction: Chris and Nick Libbey
Text: John Ashbery
USA 2015, 3:34 min
2016 - Audience Award
This film aims to capture and enhance Ashbery’s poem by chronicling a man’s journey through life and the wonderful, boring, and ultimately finite experiences that come with it. And then it got very cool.

Standard Time
Direction: Hanna Slak and Lena Reinhold
Text: Daniela Seel
Germany 2017, 3:00 min
2017 - Jury Award
A short experimental film based on a poem by Daniela Seel which plays with different layers of sound, image and meaning.

Heartbreak
Direction: Dave Tynan
Text: Emmet Kirwan
Ireland 2017, 6:51 min
2017 - Special Mention
“Heartbreak”, written by Emmet Kirwan and directed by Dave Tynan, tells the story of a young schoolgirl (Jordanne Jones) from her teenage pregnancy to raising her son in modern Ireland.

The last time
Direction and Text: Christine Hooper
GB 2016, 3:50 min
2017 - Audience Award
One woman’s struggle to stub out love’s flame.

The Desktop Metaphor
Direction: Helmie Stil
Text: Caleb Parkin
GB 2017, 2:48 min
2018 - Jury Award
“The Desktop Metaphor” is a film by Helmie Stil of Caleb Parkin’s second placed poem in the National Poetry Competition 2016. An isolation of life, scanning through it.

Blue Flash Flash
Direction: Jane Glennie
Text: Julia Bird
GB 2017, 0:39 min
2018 - Special Mention
“Blue Flash Flash” describes the moment in a child’s life in which they learn a new word – octopus – and their neurons act to lock down the knowledge forever. From minuscule beginnings, the acquisition of a language is fundamental to our identity. Language gives us words in our minds and describes who we are to ourselves. It is the facade in our interactions with each other.

Patata Day
Direction: Peter Böving
Text: Marie Nimier
Germany 2016, 4:05 min
2018 - Audience Award
This cinematic parable tells the story of five people in a diner who spin a yarn about potato dishes. In the next scene, funnily animated potatoes appear. The audience cheerfully follows the film but understands that a highly topical issue is served with the potatoes on the plate.

Hiatus
Regie: Vivian Ostrovsky
Text: Claire Lispector (1920–1977)
Brazil 2018, 6:20 min
2019 - Jury Award - Best Video
The protagonist of this film is the reclusive, introspective Ukrainian-Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. It is based on a single TV interview broadcast only after her death. What she says in the 1977 interview is still very pertinent and corresponds to a feeling of ,in-betweenness’ which I myself feel today.

The right to fall apart
Animation: Rika Tarigan
Text: Yara M. Ahmed
Germany / Egypt 2019, 3 min
2019 - Jury Award - Best Animation
“The Right to Fall Apart” is an experimental short film that seeks to depict the labors of a body burdened with depression and worry. It explores how we navigate through the severity of emotional and mental restlessness. Stressed by intensity, the protagonist tries to escape into a fictional oasis of words, language and images.

Hate for sale
Animation: Anna Eijsbouts
Text: Neil Gaiman
Netherlands 2017, 2:39 min
2019 - Special Mention
A stop-motion animated film about the world we live in. A world in which we consume hate as much as we are consumed by it. This film examines the alluring and tempting qualities of this devouring emotion and why we keep buying into it.

The Opened Field
Direction: Helmie Stil
Text: Dom Bury
GB 2018, 4:15 min
2019 - Audience Award
“The Opened Field” is a film interpretation by Helmie Stil of Dom Burys same-titled Poem. The short film surrounds six boys in a field enacting a disturbing coming-of-age ritual. The poem covers themes of unchecked masculinity, exploring our destructive relationship with each other and with the natural world.