3. ZEBRA poetry award

ZEBRA poetry award, the first festival and award worldwide that is solely dedicated to films based on poetry, opened yesterday in it´s third edition. The biannual festival that will continue till saturday at one of Berlin´s most charming cinemas, the Babylon Mitte, started with a selection of highlights from the two previous festivals. Among them, to my surprise, Just because I'm standing here, doesn't mean I want to. 02 by Guido van der Werve, mentioned here only a few days ago.
Beside about 150 films based n poetry are special programs, one of them, Rattapallax will present the New York Independence label by the same name. Ram Devineni, publisher of Rattapallax, will present this fusion between contemporary writing and film that is also released as a DVD and avaiable at the counter for enjoyable 5 Euro only. Love is the Law by Eivind Tolas, shown as a teaser, is reason eniough not to miss this special tonight at 9h30 pm.
Love is the Law is based on a text written and performed by the Norwegian stunt poet and musician, Ole Mads Vevle. His subjective and, at times, pornographic interpretation the Christian message of love, has the form of a news program.

Angélica Chio, Ram Devineni at the opening

Another gem of the Rattapallax special will be the Casagrande Poetry Bombings. As a counter reaction to Pinochet’s bombing of the Presidential Palace in Santiago, Chile, a poetry guerilla organization called Casagrande dropped 100,000 poetry bookmarks over the Palace from a helicopter in March 23, 2001. The bookmarks twirled in the air and rained on the 10,000 spectators who came to witness the spectacle. Since then, the group has rained poems on several other bomb sites around the world, including Guernica and Croatia. The film is a repertoire of these peaceful bombings.

Also tonight, as part of Beziehungsstreifen, will be he screening of Let us first be friends by Angélica Chio, a well known name to friends of the Directors Lounge as she participated since the first edition back in 2005.
The score of Let us first be friends, a bluegrass song, comes with lyricsbased on online adds published by women and men looking for partner. Hilarious.

Mannaka No le (The House In The Middle)

On the screen tomorrow, friday: Mannaka No le (The House In The Middle) by André Werner, shown in world premiere on this years Directors Lounge will be screened at 3h30 pm as part of Gesellschaftsspiele. Mannaka No le, pure japanese poetry, entirely filmed in the deserts of Nevada, is also on air at Directors Lounge television. This will be the first major screening of Mannaka No le (The House In The Middle) with it´s new, brilliant remastered score, an achievement by Dan of tagez fame.


• Rattapallax thursday 9h30 pm

• Let us first be friends Beziehungsstreifen, thursday 10 pm

• Mannaka No le Gesellschaftsspiele, friday 3h30 pm

Kino Babylon berlin:mitte
Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 30
10178 Berlin