THEY ALWAYS SAY TERÉZIA MORA (D 2021)

Trailer for the experimental film SIE SAGEN IMMER TERÉZIA MORA (D 2021; Director: Thomas Henke)

SIE SAGEN IMMER TERÉZIA MORA (D 2021; R.: Thomas Henke) is the first film in a newly initiated accompanying film series to the Kassel Grimm Poetics Professorship. The film was made on the occasion of Terézia Mora's Grimm Poetics Professorship in 2021 during the Corona pandemic, observing the rules of distance and hygiene. The film premiered at the 38th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival in the fall of 2021 (in short: DokFest).

It is a media-aesthetically experimental film, much of the material of which was derived from video conference recordings of a reading by as well as interviews about Terézia Mora. These 'pandemic' video-telephony formats were subsequently cinematically edited, visually embedded in the (everyday) context of the author and dialogically assembled.

Screenshots from THEY ALWAYS SAY TERÉZIA MORA (D 2021)
© Thomas Henke, Stefanie Kreuzer, Terézia Mora

The result is a 79-minute film about Terézia Mora, who reads from the manuscript of her diary and workbook Fleckenverlauf , which will be published by Luchterhand-Verlag (not until) September 2021. This reading is continuously interrupted and commented on in the film by statements from fellow writers (Andreas Jungwirth, Katja Lange-Müller), her editor (Klaus Siblewski), her agent (Karin Graf), a Kassel student (Flora L. M. Saß) and professor (Stefanie Kreuzer) as well as the director (Thomas Henke). It is thus neither a conventional reading nor a film portrait in the traditional sense. In allusion to the film title, it is rather necessary to continuously ask who actually means what when THEY [...] ALWAYS [SAY] TERÉZIA MORA. One answer, given in the credits at the end of the film and immediately discarded afterwards, is: "the unity of person and work". However, many other answers are conceivable and implicit ...

Credits

Director: Thomas Henke. Cast: Terézia Mora, Karin Graf, Thomas Henke, Andreas Jungwirth, Stefanie Kreuzer, Katja Lange-Müller, Flora L. M. Saß, Klaus Siblewski. Camera: Terézia Mora, Isabel Kriedemann, René Kriedemann, Stefanie Kreuzer. Interviews: Thomas Henke in collaboration with Stefanie Kreuzer. Editing: Peggy Henke. Finishing: Oliver Held (Heldfilm Cologne). Editing: Stefanie Kreuzer. Production: HENKE-MEDIEN. Financing: Stefanie Kreuzer as professor at the University of Kassel. Text excerpts from Terézia Mora's Fleckenverlauf. A Diary and Workbook (Luchterhand 2021) and her novel On the Rope (Luchterhand 2019). - © Thomas Henke, Stefanie Kreuzer, Terézia Mora | 2021.

Interview from November 18, 2021 - © Hessischer Rundfunk - www.hr.de

The Kassel Grimm Poetics Professorship (GPP) is currently being given a new media accent. In addition to literary figures, filmmakers are to be increasingly invited to Kassel. In cooperation with the media artist and director Thomas Henke (FH Bielefeld), an accompanying series of filmic (artist) portraits of the award winners is planned. This will be an associative continuation in the tradition of FELICITAS HOPPE SAYS (D 2017; directors: Thomas Henke and Oliver Held), a cinematic portrait of a female author that was made two years before Felicitas Hoppe's Kassel Grimm Poetics Professorship.

SIE SAGEN IMMER TERÉZIA MORA (D 2021; Director: Thomas Henke) is the first film in the planned Grimm Poetics Professorship film series to be produced specifically in this context.

- Stefanie Kreuzer | As of Dec. 2021 -