Animated short film in 7 chapters
Synopsis:
The 15-minute short film “Weiße Wildnis” (WT) is an animated experimental film based on a poem by Thuringian poet Daniela Danz. The project was developed in close collaboration between seven filmmakers from Weimar and Leipzig and the author Daniela Danz.
The film addresses our longing for orientation and control, expressed in the quest to map the world in order to understand the things that surround us – but it also shows the stubbornness of maps, which provokes the things to resist. The need for control over nature is countered by a poetic “de-mapping,” causing disturbances and revealing a wilderness that is impossible to capture through numbers and formulas.
The Story:
They made it: a cartographer and his colleague managed to measure the entire world between them. No blank spots are left on their maps. Everything around them is clear and safe.
Soon in, their world is thrown into disarray. The measuring devices begin to produce incomprehensible signals – a wind full of interferences. The situation becomes threatening. At the beginning, there is still a connection between the two. Then the wind grows into a storm, signals cannot be interpreted any longer, all devices and means of communication get destroyed. Nothing feels save anymore, maps fly about and the landscape turns into a threat. In the midst of this chaos a calm suddenly returns.
Bit by bit, the cartographer comes to a rest. Now he is forced to listen into himself, communication without devices becomes possible. New landscapes start to emerge – those of perception, colors, feelings and memories. Change is now the new point of reference, and the cartographer’s own resonance the basis for a new way of understanding.
Duration: 15 min
Year: 2025
Technique: cut out animation, top-motion, analogue drawn animation
Script: Daniela Danz
Direction/Animation: Juliane Franke, Catalina Giraldo, Aline Helmcke, Anya Ryzhkova, Sandra Reyes, Franka Sachse, Ana Maria Vallejo
Music: Maria Schween
Production: FilmVermoegen GmbH
Story development: Literary Society of Thuringia
Sponsors:
- Thuringian State Chancellery (film funding)
- Central German Media Funding (MDM)
