From 19 to 22 November 2020, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, the first and still the biggest international platform for poetry films, would have turned Berlin into the international centre of the poetry film scene for what is now the eleventh time. Then came the new lockdown for the cultural sector, and the ZEBRA – deprived of its natural habitat – will be moving on to the web.
As well as the competition to find the best poetry films, the festival’s online edition and its 20 programmes featuring 250 animations, feature films, experimental films and documentaries offer an insight into the wealth of all the facets of the poetry film genre, especially the flourishing poetry film scene in Canada and Québec.
Around 2,000 films have been submitted for the festival this year from more than 100 different countries. This is a new record and shows how the genre of the poetry film is continuing to develop at breakneck speed thanks to new technical and aesthetic possibilities and is gaining in prominence worldwide. The ZEBRA encourages and promotes young creators of poetry films, so we are especially pleased to see that 72 of the films at the festival are premières and ten filmmakers will be presenting their debut works.
I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to all our partners and sponsors, poets and filmmakers, to the artistic directors Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel and Alexander Gumz and to all our colleagues at the Haus für Poesie.
The corona pandemic means that we need to be especially flexible this year. I wish us all an inspiring and successful (online) festival.
Dr. Thomas Wohlfahrt, Director Haus für Poesie and ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival