“Notebook (1940-1962) is arguably Marie Menken’s best known film, and its great beauty lies in its simplicity and variety — it is as if we were seeing her whole body of filmic work condensed in this scrapbook, which consists of nine films or film- fragments, which she shot between the late forties and the early sixties. This open, new filmic form encouraged many filmmakers to show fragments and hardly edited films and incorporate them in autobiographical and dairy films. Marie Menken herself said about Notebook: ‘They are too tiny or too explicit for a remark, but one or two are my dearest children’.” (Ute Aurand)

“I asked 10 friends, filmmakers and non-filmmakers, to make a film about the Seasons — a child, an 80 year old, a painter, two artists and filmmaker friends, I also made one.” (Ute Aurand)

“Envíos (letters) are moments in photography and film that I dedicate and send to particular persons. Thoughts, sensations, images transmitted by the Envíos are fragments of life made possible through encountering those persons. In the Envíos these fragments return, or move towards another place of reference. Each Envío is a consignment in a small cardboard box, consisting of a film reel or photography and accompanying text. Envío No. 26 is for Fernando Orrega and Reinhardt Schulz and was filmed in El Volcan, Chile.” (Jeannette Muñoz)

Now in her 80s, Renate Sami has been making films since 1975, each work emerging from a strong desire to make that particular film. Whether long or short films, shot on 16mm, MiniDV or HD, with or without sound, dialogue or music — what they all have in common is the special inner freedom with which Renate Sami gives every film its form. As its explicit title implies, Venedig Dezember 2011 is a subjective record of a visit to Venice in winter.