Germany – After a long period of intensive preparation, the documentary film “Girl of Sand” (in German: “Sandmädchen”) is set to be made for the cinema this year. Author and director is the Leipzig film-maker Mark Michel, working together with the young, autistic writer Veronika Raila.
In order to complete the financing, a crowd funding campaign is starting in April on Vision Bakery. This can be found here http://www.visionbakery.com/sa
It’s a fascinating project about a young autistic woman, Veronika Raila, 23, who has Asperger’s syndrome. She is unable to speak, nor can she walk and her sense of touch and all bodily sensations are missing. Yet by using a special support system she can communicate with others. Although as a small child the doctors rated her intelligence quotient as zero, she’s now studying literature and theology and writes stories and poems. Veronika has a remarkable, wide-awake mind and highly sensitive perception. She experiences the world in aesthetic dimensions – numbers dance, colours ring, people glow.
Together with Veronika Raila, Mark Michel has already made the short film “Veronika”. It was screened world-wide at over 60 festivals and has also won many prizes, including the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau prize for shorts 2012; a nomination for the German Short Film Prize 2011; “Goldener Spatz” for innovation 2012; “Bamberger Reiter” 2012; plus the classification “Besonders wertvoll” / Particularly valuable”.)
Below you can view the trailer for “Veronika” – Short Film.
VERONIKA – Kurzfilm from Mark Michel on Vimeo.
Veronika’s thoughts:
“Life’s possibilities are often under estimated, which also goes for finding creative solutions to problems. At the meeting point between the so called “normal” and the “abnormal”, mutual inspiration can lead to entirely new discoveries. This benefits everyone, not just the handicapped. There’s really only one answer to the question, what sort of society do we want to live in?
I wish for a society in which each person is valued for whatever it is that makes him or her special.”
The film will employ various styles and experimental procedures in order to describe Veronika’s world, to approximate her perceptions and the way she expresses herself. The closeness and the exchanges between Veronika and Mark are part of the film project, in this way she will become the co-author, her texts and her artistic work will have their own space.
The film also tells the story how Veronika has developed over the years – how she fought to find a way of contacting the “outside” world, to be noticed and recognized as herself, how she managed to break out of her isolation, to express herself despite all the resistance and how she found friends and supporters.
Veronika says during the film:
“Sand is an obvious metaphor since I am not stable; it takes only a tiny impulse and my sense of being crumbles. Sometimes I feel just like that, as though I’ve fallen into a thousand bits”
Mark Miche is asking for help to make a cinema film about the power of human fantasy. “Support “Girl of Sand” as a crowd funder!”
The Girl of Sand website can be found here www.sandmädchen.de
Email – info@sandmaedchen.de / info@markmichel.de
You can also follow on Facebook: www.facebook.com/sandmaedchen.
The crowd funding website can be found here: http://www.vison bakery.com/sandmaedchen-film