Projekt: Superwoman (Austria, 2016)

(Documentary film, 90 min., written & directed by Barbara Caspar)
As a translator, you sometimes work projects that appear to fall off the face of the earth. Some you never hear of again, others suddenly reappear under a new name or the banner of some other firm than the one that originally contracted your services.

That's the case with this documentary film, Projekt: Superwoman, the topic of which we found truly intriguing when we translated a treatment for it seven years ago, way back in 2009 — and not for Lotus Film, the Austrian company releasing it this year.

Projekt: Superwoman was written and directed by Barbara Caspar, an art-house documentary director whose taste seems to lean towards absorbing feminist subjects. Here, she tackles the true and relatively unknown story (especially outside of Spain, where it transpired) of the radical proto-feminist Aurora Rodriguez (23 April 1879 — 28 Dec 1955) and her daughter Hildegart, "the Red Virgin".

Aurora was a firm believer in eugenics who, thanks to an unknown donor found via newspaper advertisements, produced her amazing daughter, Hildegart (born 9 Dec, 1914), a brilliant intellectual prodigy who spoke six languages, possessed a law degree, had written masses of articles and books, and become an international leftist leader all by her late teens. When Hildegart tried to become an independent woman and leave her overbearing and possessive mother for a position as secretary for H.G. Wells, Aurora shot her dead.

To paraphrase the Lotus Film website: Casper's documentary, Projekt: Superwoman, tells the story as a mixture of documentary and animation film; she examines the Rodriguez case and explores the extent to which this story reflects current mother-daughter relationships and modern lifestyles.

The story was previously filmed by the Peru-born Spanish filmmaker and actor Fernando Fernán Gómez (28 Aug 1921 — 21 Nov 2007) in 1977 as Mi hija Hildegart / My Daughter Hildegart (poster above), and as a short film in 2011 by Sheila Pye entitled The Red Virgin — "Red Virgin" being the nickname bequeathed Hildegart while still alive.

The director Boris Undorf, most likely unintentionally, used a riff of the story for his intriguing and unjustly unknown low-budget, US-set horror movie Sonata in 2004.

Trailer to

Boris Undorf's Sonata (2004):

"Sonata" (Feature Film) International Trailer from Boris Undorf on Vimeo.

The Importance of Grammar, Part IV

Fokus Figur: 30 Jahre Die Galerie / Focus Figure: 30 Years of Die Galerie.

(Bilingual catalog [G&E], hardcover, 144 pages. With shorts texts by Corneille, Klaus Zylla, Franz Hitzler, Volker Stelzmann, Eckhard Kremers, Sandra Brandels Crawford, Heiner Meyer, Joram Harel, Roberta Baj, Tony Swaanswijk, Hans Brockstedt, Daniel Boulakia, Jane Sung, Ingeborg Flagge, Daiga Upeniece, Volker Hauff, Jürgen Jeske, Marika de Feo and others.]

André Masson, Femme tenant un oiseau 
(1924, oil on canvas, 55.2 x 33 cm)

The exhibition Focus Figure: 30 Years of Die Galerie ran from 2 Sept. – 7 Nov. 2009 at Die Galerie, Frankfurt, and included the work of approx. 40 artists.

To quote the press release:

"When founded in 1979, the initial focus of DIE GALERIE was on printed works. Since then, DIE GALERIE has evolved into an internationally active art dealership of high-quality art of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. […] DIE GALERIE moved into its prestigious space in the Frankfurt Westend in 1995, and the change of location was accompanied by a change of activities. Since then, the gallery has concentrated on gallery work, presentations at international art fairs, and the communication between artists, collectors and museums. […] When it comes to the representation of the interests of his artists, Peter Femfert cooperates with galleries in (among other places) France, Italy and Spain, takes advantage of an international network of connections, supplies his exhibitions to prestigious institutions or uses his enthusiasm and persistence to instigate sensational exhibitions […]."

Pierre Alechinsky, L’Âge d’orange

(1970, acrylic on paper on canvas, 115 x 151 cm)

"The thematic centre that bonds all activities of DIE GALERIE is the presentation of the figure, the visual exploration of the topic of mankind in its most varied shapes and forms. Indeed, the identity of a gallery is defined much more by the art and character of 'its' artists than by the sum of its activities. In this way DIE GALERIE has developed a face, a distinctive physiognomy, which reflects the signs of its age with pride and a portion of humor."

Robert Combas, Le Guépard rayé

 (2007, acrylic on canvas, 210 x 205 cm)

"And exactly that will be obvious to see at the anniversary exhibition FOCUS FIGURE […]. All artists of DIE GALERIE are involved and will be present, either in person or represented by their art work. The exhibition takes you from the obsessed figures of André Masson to Max Ernst's alter ego Loplop; from Jean Dubuffet's 'raw' friends, Karel Appel's wind-twisted forms, Corneille's sensual women, Lucebert's gnomes, Rudolf Hausner's self-portraits, Valerio Adami's characters of the Old Testament and Emilio Tadini's fairytale figures to the contemporary representation of the figure: the emotive of Dieter Hacker, the vulnerable of Eckhard Kremers, the shrill of Heiner Meyer, the audacious of Klaus Zylla, the voiceless of Volker Stelzmann, the melancholic of Igor Mitoraj and the angularly chiseled of Dietrich Klinge."

All art images taken from the gallery's press release.

Iceland's Artists and Sagas / Islands Künstler und die Sagas (2011)

(Documentary, 52 min, HD, 2011; A Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion in coproduction with ZDF, Navigator Film, RUV, ORF and Swiss Television, in cooperation with ARTE. Idea und concept, Helga Brekkan & Annette Brüggemann; direction, Helga Brekkan.)
Sometime in 2010, I translated the voiceover text for this documentary into English. Released in 2011, Iceland's Artists and the Sagas is narrated by the talented actress and voiceover artist, Priscilla Bergey, whom I am more than willing to recommend to anyone in need of a narrator for a film project.
To simply quote the Gebrueder Beetz press release: "Frosty glaciers and hot springs, dark winter days and bright summer nights – Iceland is a country of the extremes. Not only is the nature in Iceland astonishing: ancient sagas, crime stories, eccentric video art, and enigmatic music are a testimonial for the country's unique art scene. The small island in the Atlantic Ocean is not just a geological hotspot, but also a creative one. In times like these, with the impacts of the global financial crisis visible everywhere in Iceland, the values of these cultural resources become evident. The bubble of fast money has burst, but people still have their fantasy, their poetry and their ability to tell a good tale to hold on to. After all, it was Icelandic sagas that gave birth to the hero, the story of an individual human being, long before the first European medieval romance thought of it. […] The documentary Iceland's Artists and the Sagas not only gives an insight into the creative energy of the country; following the steps of some of Iceland's most famous artists, writers and musicians, it also explores the very nature of this creativity that drives and defines an entire country."

Iceland’s Artists and Sagas 
from gebrueder beetz filmproduktion on Vimeo.

The Breeding of a Super Race (2009)

(Documentary film, 52 min., by Boris Rabin aka Boris Karadzhev; a German-Russian co-production of  arte, Lichtfilm, Mirumir and MDR.)

When I translated a treatment for this documentary in 2008 for Lichtfilm GmbH, Cologne, the working title was still Creating a New Human Race in the Soviet Union / Menschenlabor Sowjetunion; the latter, the German title, seems to have been retained.

Oddly enough, at Lichtfilm, the website proclaims the English title as The Breading of a Super Race, a title given after my involvement and that makes me think of Cannibal Kiev. (Is the reference too obscure to be understood?) In any event, the title does not seem to appear on the DVD cover, as one can see above, or in the film credit sequence

First 8.5 Minutes –
in German:

The film description at Lichtfilm's website, like most of their film descriptions, was probably supplied by Google Translator — Abraham Translations definitely did NOT do it. It seems to be the description used everywhere on-line, and is such a damning example of "Denglish" (Deutsch + English = Denglish) that we won't use it here.

In short, The Breeding of a Super Race documents and traces the various aspects of the Soviet Union's attempts, following the death of Lenin, to create a "new man", be it for use as a soldier during war, for hard labor, or for laboratory testing. Aspects touched upon in the film include cross-breeding between man and ape, rejuvenation by blood transfer, fixing conditional reflexes to genes, and artificially inseminating women by the sperm of geniuses.