Dear readers, At the beginning of May Cinema, a new anthology about the history of cinema, was released by the publisher Elif. Gathering a wide range of texts, authors like José Oliver or Ulrike Almut Sandig express their fascination for cinema in a captivating way. The Poetry film Magazine’s new edition wants to address this matter, just in reverse: we would like to dig deeper into the fascination for poetry, addressing the filmmakers’ and directors’ point of view. This direction of looking at the relation between poetry and film seems to have gained significance lately. We would be neglecting the influence that poetry had on the development of the visual language of filmmaking if we reduced poetry film to a mere translation of a poem into a video. Since the beginning of the 20th century, filmmakers took inspiration from poets and poems, using them as an inspiration, guideline or challenge for creating moving image work. This “Cinema of Poetry” – the title refers to an influential yet critical text from 1965 by Pier Paolo Pasolini …

Dear readers, To what extent can a poetry film be labelled a work of art? Did it establish itself yet as a form of fine art? The poetry film scene certainly grants it this status. However, looking beyond it, the status of the poetry film as an independent fine arts form appears to be unclear.

Liebe Leserin, lieber Leser, inwieweit ist der Poetryfilm als Kunstwerk zu bezeichnen? In welchen Ausprägungen hat er sich als Kunstform bereits etabliert? Sicher gesteht die Poetryfilmszene ihm den Status eines Kunstwerks zu. Sobald man über diese hinausblickt, scheint die Existenz des Poetryfilms als eigenständige Form (Gattung?) der Bildenden Kunst jedoch infrage zu stehen.

Liebe Leserin, lieber Leser, Poesiefilme lassen Texte bildhaft werden. Oftmals geschieht dies durch die Inszenierung von Schrift: etwa als Einblendung eines ganzen Textes, einzelner Ausschnitte, eines Schriftbilds oder in Form von Untertiteln.