13/11/2022
https://youtu.be/_5yIXW9A9cU
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, dear colleagues.
Herewith we would like to inform you that our documentary film "DORA - Escape into Music" (Croatian title "DORA - Bijeg U Glazbu", English title "DORA - Escape into Music") will have its cinematic premiere coming
Tuesday, November 15, 2022 in Berlin cinema BABYLON, at 19:30 hrs
The film has already received four awards:
The highest possible rating from the independent German film rating agency FBW: "particularly valuable", the "Silver Award" at the New York Movie Awards 2022, as well as two awards as "best documentary" in competition at the Florence Film Awards 2022 and the Filmtage Oberschwaben.
It has a running time of 116 minutes and is available in a 5.1 surround sound version.
It is distributed in German by barnsteiner-film, Ascheffel, and for the Balkan countries by discovery d.o.o., Zagreb.
The official premiere of the Croatian version will take place in Zagreb on March 2, 2023, as part of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the composer's death.
The day before, March 1, 2023, the Leipzig pianist Kyra Steckeweh, will give a concert in Zagreb with piano works by Dora Pejačević.
About the film:
With this movie we dive into a time that has more in common with today's than one might think. "It was the golden age of security," writes Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) in his book "The World of Yesterday." It was in this "world of yesterday" that composer Dora Pejačević (1885-1923) created her works, which are in no way inferior to those of her famous male colleagues. She was born a countess and was able to develop her talent at an early age. But after World War I and the collapse of the K.u.K-monarchy, she had to adapt her life to the new times in order to continue composing. "A person like me cannot choose any class," she wrote to a friend.
After her tragic death in Munich in 1923, Dora Pejačević fell into oblivion, at least outside her native Croatia. In the film, her music comes alive again, and filmmakers, pianist Kyra Steckeweh and director Tim van Beveren, together with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, have succeeded in realizing a plan that the composer was unable to complete 100 years ago.
Promoting the rediscovery of women in music history has been the endeavor of pianist Kyra Steckeweh and filmmaker Tim van Beveren for several years. Their joint debut film "Women Composers" (DE 2018, 95 min.) met with great interest at home and abroad. It received several awards in the USA and was awarded the OPUS KLASSIK for best audiovisual production in Germany in 2020.
Like the film "Women Composers", the new film was made without any public funding. It was financed with the help of two successful crowdfunding’s and private sponsors and realized under the difficult production conditions of the Corona pandemic.
The filmmakers received significant support here from the Berlin-based docfilmpool association, a coalition of over 50 German and international filmmakers, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Steinways and Sons and Leica Cameras - berlin, the Crownhill Foundation - London, the Bareva Foundation - Liechtenstein and the Croatian Embassy in Berlin, his excellency the ambassador Mr. Gordan Bakota.
The English language trailer can be seen here: https://youtu.be/_5yIXW9A9cU
Statements of the directors:
KYRA STECKEWEH:
"For me as a pianist, Dora Pejačević́ was a great discovery. I didn't even know her name until a few years ago. Now I have most of her wonderful piano works in my repertoire.
For me, her music tells of deep feelings, of crises, of longings. I have never experienced this immediate and absolutely honest emotionality so strongly with any other composer. From me as an interpreter, too, her music demands, in addition to technical challenges, a special honesty of expression, a particularly strong concession.
It was very inspiring for me in the course of research and filming for the film "Dora - Escape into Music" to get to know the places where Dora Pejačević composed her works and to dive into her world of thought via letters and other sources from her estate."
TIM VAN BEVEREN:
"I have been making films for 40 years. Very different films, about problems in our everyday life, about aviation, about culture, about people. Never before have I met an artist and such a fascinating woman with such an interesting biography. A composer who was completely unjustly forgotten outside her home country.
Access to Dora Pejačević's music and thus also to her emotionality was then made possible by my intensive collaboration with my colleague, the pianist Kyra Steckeweh. Our search for traces extended over almost four years. A long period of time during which, in retrospect, I would not want to miss a single day of this collaboration.
The film was finally made under extremely difficult conditions: despite numerous applications without a single cent of national culture funding and without the co-production of any television station. The earthquake in Croatia in March 2020 destroyed important motifs and facilities for us, such as collections and archives, and then the Corona pandemic permanently hampered our production conditions.
But the biggest disappointment was certainly experienced by our Croatian co-producer Noćni Let, led by the well-known Croatian director and screenplay writer Ivan Salaj. Their applications for national film funding from the Croatian Audio-Visual Center (HAVC) were rejected a total of three times, with flimsy and absurd explanations and prevarications. Therefore, at the moment it is not clear whether the film can also be released - as planned - in a Croatian language version."
On the day of the premiere we will conduct a streaming of the English subtitled version of the film starting at 19:00 hrs and a live-transmission into the cinema in Berlin after the projection has ended (aprox. 21:30 hrs Central European Time) via Zoom. If you are interested to participate, please send an email to us.
Also, if you require other materials, such as high resolution pictures from the production, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind regards
Tim van Beveren
- director -
tvbmedia productions
Cinematic trailer of the the new documentary film by Kyra Steckeweh and Tim van Beveren about the composer Dora Pejačević (1885-1923).
