Marie Elisa Scheidt is a German director winner of the first edition of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival in 2011. She was born in Dresda in 1987 and studied at the University of Television and Film Munich and at the School of Image Arts Toronto (Ryerson University). She also attended the Berlinale Talent Campus and the Talent Camp Odense. While she was studying, Elisa worked on films in Canada, Belgium, UK and the USA. When She finished her course of studies, she took part in several international film productions in Munich, San Diego, Prague and Accra.
Her works frequently cross the border between documentary and fiction and explore human relationships to better understand what role people have in contemporary society. Her documentary entitled On a trip down memory lane (2009) obtained Honorable Mention at Konstanz Short Film Festival 2009, and was awarded the 1st Prize as “Important Cinematic Work” at Alternative Film/Video Festival Belgrade 2010. Five completely different personalities disclose splinters of thought and report on crucial moments of their lives.
In 2011 Elisa directed I love you, I love you not which won the first prize at Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival. Girl in Limbo and Fliehkraft are two short movies of the same year.
Through the lens on Inkedkenny is a documentary of 2012 which obtained important awards such as Grand Prix at Lugano Film Festival 2013, the Award for Best Documentary at Bamberg Short Film Festival 2013, the 1st Prize at Queer-Streifen Gay/Lesbian Short Film Festival Regensburg 2013, the 2nd Prize at Konstanz Short Film Festival 2013, the Honorable Mention at Regensburger Kurzfilmwoche 2013.
Holy F%&# is an experimental short movie directed in 2013 that was awarded as Best Experimental Short at Columbus International Film + Video Festival. In the same year Elisa also directed the documentary Sobota, which tells the story of a man without morals and without remorse, the most notorious pimp and merciless thug in Vienna’s red-light-district back in the 1960’s. The film analyses the character of the man as such thirty years after publishing his memoirs. Thanks to this short movie Elisa won a prize as Best Documentary at Landshut Short Film Festival 2014, FFF Award for the best film by an emerging artist at Regensburg Short Film Festival 2014. Loly H. won Best Documentary at Intervideo Awards Mainz 2014.
In 2014, the Web series project Mit leichtem Gepäck / Free to go took Elisa, and some other young directors, around the world and they produced short films in Southern Europe, East Africa, South East Asia and the USA.
In 2017 Elisa directed Our wildest dreams, a documentary which tells about the beauty and hardship of living as contemporary nomads. The documentary was a great success and won many prizes, such as Best Cinematography at Rhode Island International Film Festival 2017, Best Score at New York City Independent Film Festival 2018, Best Documentary Feature at Impact Doc Awards San Diego 2018, Second Prize, Best Documentary at the Desert Rocks Film and Music Festival Hesperia 2019.
Elisa’s last work is Occupation 1968 (2018) and tells about the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 from the perspective of the armies and people that took part in the invasion.
Through the lens of InkedKenny
2012 18′
InkedKenny is a photographer who has a special relationship with his models: he looks beyond the facades, he produces but also opposes them. He shapes the universe of the homosexual Bear Community of Montreal by taking pictures of muscular men who embody a certain ideal of beauty. What appears at first glance to be a pure body cult is a source of strength in an extraordinary destiny.
SOBOTA
2013, 30’
Sobota is a man without morals, without remorse. In the 1960’s, he was known as the most notorious pimp and merciless thug in Vienna’s red-light-district. Later he became the author of one of the most demonized and top-selling Austrian autobiographies. His provocative reports have been a golden opportunity for the media, who mystified him and created an image of the ultimate “bad boy”. But where does the fascination for the dark side of life come from? What is left of him today, over thirty years after the publishing of his memoirs? The film does not search for Sobota’s supposed motives, but for the abysmal human character in each of us.
Holy F%&#
2013, 7’
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein maintained that the limits of one’s language are the limits of one’s world. But is it possible that by expanding and broadening the definition of language, the world itself can become, wider, deeper, bigger? In HOLY F#&% we see people who liberate themselves when they bend and break the rules of language, foregrounding its materiality and unconscious dimension, producing sounds which give access to realms of the mind that words cannot reveal and express. With this uninhibited flouting of conventions and the hegemony of the functional, they challenge us to expand our definitions of language and speech in different directions.
