Message from the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit

Foreword

The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival – the film festival for the art of poetry – was the first and is the largest and most important platform for poetry films. More than 900 films from 71 countries have been sent in for the fifth competition to find the best poetry films. The international programme
committee made up of filmmakers and poets has brought together an exciting programme of features round about the competition, from films
for children to horror and erotic films for the midnight hour. Poetry films are as old as film-making itself, and needed the new technologies
to respond in the form of film to the millennia-old art of the poem. So it is natural to see the origins of the poetry film, with films by Michael Curtiz and the filmmakers of the Spanish avant-garde, among others, side by side with the latest additions to the genre. The media art exhibition from the
Netherlands completes the programme together with the CinemAperitivo from Italy.
For the first time, poets are presenting their works directly to filmmakers. The first results of a collaboration between Israeli filmmakers and German
poets are being presented, as are transformations of poems into film bystudents at our country’s film schools. All this would not be possible without a great many supporters, partners and sponsors. We would particularly like to thank the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, the Goethe Institute, Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG, the German Foreign Ministry, the German Literature Fund, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the German-Israeli Future Forum Foundation.
Film goes poetry! A warm welcome to all the filmmakers and poets and to our audience!

Thomas Wohlfahrt, Head of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin and director of the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival