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team
The hungry eyes festival is being organised, curated and realised eleven by a team of film and performance makers, most of whom met in Gießen while studying applied theatre studies. The organising team sees itself as a collective that works together in a grassroots democratic way and provides for a fluid distribution of work according to personal interests and capacities instead of insisting on a strict division of tasks. It tries to create structures that enable them and the invited artists to work together under appropriate and mutually enriching conditions. In doing so neither for the organisers nor for the artists of the festival precarious work structures are reproduced.
Within the team, we count the hours we worked and pay ourselves accordingly. Auf diese Weise möchten wir vermeiden, dass organisatorische Arbeiten wie beispielsweise Protokollieren, Buchhaltung, etc. geringer bezahlt werden als inhaltliche Arbeiten wie etwa die Kuration oder die Planung des Vermittlungsprogramms. Uns ist bewusst, dass auch diese Bezahlweise keine absolute Fairness gewährleisten kann, jedoch ist diese Herangehensweise die, welche sich in unseren Gesprächen als die loyalste und unbestrittenste herausgestellt hat.
Generally we are guided by the lower-fee-limit (Honoraruntergrenze) published by Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste.
Amélie Haller
Amélie Haller (she/her)(*1993) studied the Master of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. She works as a freelance artist and playwright, as well as curator of the 'hungry eyes festival'. Amélie's own artistic works range from performance to film and installation. In 2021, her short film 'tell me your searchwords' was invited to the feminist Porn Film Festival Vienna. She is currently doing artistic research on performative storytelling and the possibility of a collecting and arranging narrative for the stage.
Elena Giffel
Elena Giffel (she/her) (*1984) studied philosophy in Würzburg and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. She works as a freelance artist, director, costume designer and author. Since 2016, she has been co-organiser and curator at the hungry eyes festival.
Eva Kirsch
Eva Kirsch (she/her) (*1996) graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Applied Theatre Studies in summer 2020, since then she has been studying film at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. She works collectively on performances and filmic projects in installation contexts and for cinema, as well as co-organising and curating various festivals such as hungry eyes festival the hungry eyes festival and the dokumentafilmwoche hamburg. At the moment she is particularly interested in alternative pornographic forms and works together with collaborators as a (co-)director, dramaturge or editor on feminist porn films. These have been shown at the Luststreifen Film Festival, in the short film competition of the PornFilmFestival Berlin and at the San Francisco PornFilmFestival. Most recently, she has also worked several times as a freelance camerawoman in performance contexts (including productions at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm) and, since the 2020 festival edition, in the press office of the Diagonale - Festival of Austrian Film.
Eva Streit
Eva Streit (she/her) (*1994) completed her training as a contemporary stage dancer at the Contemporary Dance School Hamburg. She has worked as a performer in projects by Johanna Bruckner, Patricia Carolin Mai, Rica Blunck and Niels Wehr, among others. Since 2018, she has been studying Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen, working on her own productions and as artistic assistant for MONSTRA, willems&kiderlen and the integration project Salon International. She showed her own artistic works at the festival TanzArt ostwest, at Tanzlabor Hamburg, as well as eigenarten-Festival Hamburg. Since 2020, she has been part of the organising team of the hungry eyes festival.
Kathrin Frech
Kathrin Frech (she/her) studied Applied Theatre Studies at the JLU Gießen and at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. As a freelance artist, she has already been present at Seriale, the Federal Festival of Young Film, the HTA Werkschauwoche, the Leipzig Radio Play Summer and the International Women's Theatre Festival with mostly collectively developed projects revolving around the sweet spot of female dilettantism. In 2021, she realised the international performance festival DISKURS35 as part of a team of eight. Since October 2021, Frech has been studying stage and costume design at the HFBK Dresden. She has also been part of the hungry eyes festival 2022 since 2021.
Leonie Hanna Kopineck
Leonie Hanna Kopineck (she/her) (*1998) works as a performer and production assistant. Before studying theatre studies and comparative literature in Bochum and later Applied Theater Studies in Gießen, she worked as an assistant director at the Theater Duisburg. This was followed by assistant directorships at Otto-Falckenberg-Schuleand Münchner Kammerspielen (e.g. Hochdeutschlanddirected by Kevin Barz). Besides the organisation of students festivals she was also working as artist support for TANZPLATTFORM in München beteiligt, der Organisation und Kuration des hungry eyes festival 2021 und im Sommer 2022 für das IMPLANTIEREN Festival als Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit tätig. Sie gastierte für ein Semester im Bachelor Theaterregie an der ZhdK in Zürich.Ab Oktober 2022 studiert Leonie den Masterstudiengang Spiel&&Objekt an der Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch in Berlin.
Nastya Dzyuban
Nastya Dzyuban (she/her) (*1994) is engaged in art, dance, choreography. She was born in Kiev, Ukraine and currently lives in Germany. Since 2015, Nastya has been developing her artistic practice, interest and creating performative works, mostly in collaboration with close friends and colleagues. She is interested in the intersection of the dispositifs of theatre and choreography, as well as in themes such as potentiality, displacement, the notion of the common. Her work in recent years has been shown at festivals in Kiev, Frankfurt, Bochum and Mannheim. Nastya is currently studying choreography and performance in Gießen, is a scholarship holder of danceWEB 2021 and co-curator of the Diskurs35 and hungry eyes festival 2022.
Frithjof Gawenda
René Alejandro Huari Mateus
René Alejandro Huari Mateus (she*) Writing one's own biography for a programme booklet involves a violent process of simplifying a life. What is really the most important thing that others should know about me? Where I was born, what I studied, when and with whom I worked? That may be. Because that is how the readers of this short text can get a rough picture of me. I could still write: Lately I have been questioning the aesthetic choices I usually make when I criticise something, because my criticism can easily become a platform for the further reproduction of what I want to criticise.
Sophia Scherer
Sophia Scherer (she/her) was born in Graz in 1995 and moved to Gießen in 2017 to study Applied Theatre Studies, where she still lives. 2022 she works as a curator for the TheaterNatur Festival in Benneckenstein and has been part of the hungry eyes Festival collective since 2020. As a performance and video artist, she has performed at the Waggonhallen Marburg, the Frankfurt LAB, the fast forward festival and the international women's* theatre festival in Frankfurt.
Svenja Polonji
Svenja Polonji (she/her) (*1997) studied at Institute of Applied Theater Studies in Gießen and works as a performer, producer and curator. As a board member of theAlleineinboot e.V. in Bad Segeberg, she developed performative encounter projects between refugees and residents between 2015 and 2018. As a result of this work, she is a German Citizen Award winner, as well as a recipient of the Queisser Junior Award. Her mockumentary OUR OWN PRIVATE CRISIS was invited to the 2018 State of the Art in Hildesheim. She was already part of the hungry eyes festival team at the last edition. She is currently curating and producing the conference (POST)PANDEMISCH PERFORMEN for the Landesverband der Professionellen Freien Darstellenden Künste Hessen e.V. (State Association of Professional Independent Performing Arts Hesse), which deals with experimental, primarily cinematic formats in the contemporary theatre scene.
the curation process
The program of hungry eyes festival consists entirely of works in the fields of short film, performance and installation art, which are submitted via an internationally spread Open Call. A selection is then made from the submitted works, which will be shown during the festival in Gießen
The program of hungry eyes festival consists entirely of works in the fields of short film, performance and installation art, which are submitted via an internationally spread Open Call. A selection is then made from the submitted works, which will be shown during the festival in Gießen.
We curate the program collectively. This means that all team members view all submissions and then put together a program in a joint exchange process with several discussion rounds. At the end of the selection process, all members of hungry eyes festival should be confident in our program.
When deciding which works to show, we focus on content and aesthetic aspects, an experimental approach to the medium film, as well as the overall composition of the works as a program. Thus, even during the basic selection process, attention is paid to the interaction of the works and to thematic arcs and references in regards to aesthetics or content which arise between the individual works.
Pragmatic decisive factors are that the applications are complete and that the spatial and temporal requirements are met. We are of course also bound by our financial plan with the limited financial resources available to us for each submission category. We do not pay a flat fee per production, but for each artist involved. We are always grateful for questions and suggestions regarding the selection process.
We distinctly position ourselves against any discriminatory content with regard to origin, skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, age or ability. Submissions with discriminatory content or statements will not be accepted, neither will solely promotional films.
