INTERVIEW

Last year TARP cooperated with one of the biggest German Poetry Festival ZEBRA  and Goethe Institute in Lithuania which supported presentation of ZEBRA in four biggest Lithuanian cities. The ZEBRA is well known between poetry and different media uniting artists in the worldwide context. Festival coordinator Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel presented two programmes - selected German Poetry Movie Programme and International Poetry Movie Programme. It's good opportunity to learn more about ZEBRA from it's organiser's lips.

The festival started in 2002. The idea was to show international poetry films at the poesiefestival berlin 2002. Dr. Thomas Wohlfahrt, the director of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin had the idea. It called ZEBRA. On one hand everybody understand this word. On the other hand the stripes of the ZEBRA symbolize the two parts of poetry films – poetry and film.

This is the definition of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin. The film has to base on poetry. All films must be audio-visual interpretations of one or more poems. Mostly the poems are published or written before the films are finished. In some cases the filmmaker and the poets work together on one poetry film.

Sometimes there are historical, political or social tendencies. That depends on the international or national situations. In this festival many films were sent with the themes “crisis, war and conflicts”. But this tendencies we notice in all international films. Technical tendencies in German poetry films are experimental films and some very good animations. We have a very big poetry slam scene in Berlin and Germany. They produce there own poetry clips. And we have many films from the film schools, universities and academies. In some cases the film schools work together with German poets.

Not really. The general tendencies are experimental films, animations, and dramas. Often the filmmaker choose the famous poems, like “The Panther” by Hermann Hesse, or poems by Joachim Ringelnatz, Schiller and Goethe. I have searched for some German and Austrian poets in our database and find out that we have 34 poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, 20 poems by Goethe, 13 poems by Berthold Brecht, 13 by Schiller, 12 by Christian Morgenstern, 12 by Ernst Jandl, 11 by Heinrich Heine, and 11 by Herrmann Hesse. But we have over 1.000 German films in our archive.

We have 255 dramas, 155 experimental films, 154 animations, 46 performances, 39 documentations and 36 music clips for Germany in our archive.

Yes it is growing. In 2002 we have got 800 entries, in 2004 over 800 entries, in 2006 over 600 entries (because we have new conditions), in 2008 we have got 1.000 entries and this year near 1.000 entries. The selection of the winners depends on the juries. But the film should be a very good film translation of the poem. The audience must be able to see and to hear the poem/s in the film. The rhythm of the poem should be in the film. And should be a good poem, too. Both, the film and the poem are very important for the selection.

We have two juries. The programme committee and the international jury. The members of the programme committee are Heinz Hermanns, the director of interfilm berlin (biggest shortfilm festival in Berlin and our cooperation partner), Heiko Strunk (project manager of lyrikline.org, a project of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin), and one poet, one film maker or video artist and me.

The members of the international jury are Thomas Wohlfahrt, the director of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin), one film maker or video artist, one winner of the last ZEBRA awards, and one person from the mass media (TV) or other distributors.

Social aspects are one the most chosen aspects. For example, in 2006 we had an award for poetry, film and politics by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. It went to Antonello Faretta (Italy) for the Film “Just say no to family values”. And this year we have the programme “Borderline Experience”. In this programme we have films about social problems, rassism, war etc. In other programmes we show films about politic and social aspects, too. Maybe the poetry film is one those genre which mostly broachs the issue of social aspects. Other aspects are love, time, identity and death. Most of the peotry films are reactions of the actualities of everday life, because the most poems are written by contemporary poets.

We get many, very good films from the English speaking world, UK, USA, Canada and Australia. Often there are films with poetry slam or poems of the beat generation. The most films were sent by German film maker. In my opinion the reason for that is the fact that we are well known in Germany. Well, as you could imagine it is hard to say what is a really good poetry film or what do you need to get more popular. For a good poetry film you need good poetry. First step should be to work together with your Lithuanian poets (please visit www.lyrikline.org). And should work together with film makers, production companies, film school or arts academies to realize there poems.

Yes. We have steady viewers every festival and get new viewers every year. Often when the films are funny they laugh. I really don’t know if the audience influences the international jury. But, we have the Audience Prize awarded by radioeins (Berlin radio) listeners. So eight members of the audience, selected by the radio station radioeins, can vote for the best poetry film of the audience.

Yes.

For the first time in the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival a realisation workshop is taking place. The Literaturwerkstatt Berlin is bringing filmmakers from Tel Aviv together with poets from Berlin and allowing them to work together on poetry films. The results will be shown in the festival and of course the poets and filmmakers will be talking about their joint work and answering questions from the audience. Emanuella Amichai, Avi Dabach and Joshua Simon have been in an intensive exchange since the summer of 2010 with poets Daniel Falb, Monika Rinck and Jan Wagner. Poetry meets film, poets meet filmmakers. Beyond national boundaries, the three pairs of artists immersed themselves in each others' work and wrote scripts for their poetry films. They will be meeting before the festival to transform their ideas into film in six days.

The project is promoted by the German-Israeli Future Forum Foundation. With the kind support of Cine Impuls, XEN.ON° Television Campus, Suity-Berlin Apartments, Berlinpiloten and 25p *cine support

Oh, we would like to organize more workshops and to realize more projects with schools and schools children. Other plans we don’t have at his moment. But I think that are really two big projects for the future.

Thank you for the interview. Let's hope that poetry will always inspire us.