Movie Has U.S. Theatrical Premiere Wednesday, October 13 at Film Forum (NY)!!!
About VISION: (2010, 111 mins.) Directed and Written by Margarethe von Trotta. Produced by Markus Zimmer. Cinematography: Axel Block. Music: Chris Heyne. With original compositions by Hildegard von Bingen. Cast: Barbara Sukowa (Hildegard von Bingen), Heino Ferch (Brother Volmar), Hannah Herzsprung (Richardis von Stade), Lena Stolze (Jutta), Alexander Held (Abbot Kuno). France / Germany. In German with English subtitles. A Zeitgeist Films release.
Film Forum is pleased to present the U.S. theatrical premiere of VISION by New German Cinema auteur Margarethe von Trotta (MARIANNE AND JULIANE, ROSA LUXEMBURG, ROSENSTRASSE) who reunites for the 5th time with star Barbara Sukowa (ZENTROPA, BERLIN ALEXANDER PLATZ) to bring to life the extraordinary story of 12th-century Benedictine nun Hildegard von Bingen.
Hildegard von Bingen — today a cult figure — was truly a woman ahead of her time. A polymath by any century’s definition, she was a composer of Gregorian chants, a playwright, poet, and scientific pioneer in the fields of healing, herbal medicine and botany. As an iconoclastic religious figure who insisted on separate and independent abbeys for nuns, Hildegard ran up against the church’s authoritarian and patriarchal hierarchy. As a mystic and visionary, she insisted on her right to preach and interpret the Gospels. In a remarkable and luminous performance, Sukowa infuses Hildegard with the will of a modern feminist, but one tethered to a medieval universe. Von Trotta makes that world believable and lush, and at times as scary and alluring as a 900-year-old fairy tale. Luxuriantly photographed in the original medieval cloisters of the bucolic German countryside, VISION is a profound portrait of a woman who has only recently emerged from the shadows of history as a forward-thinking pioneer of faith and change.
VISION will have a 2-week engagement, October 13-26, at Film Forum (West Houston Street (West of 6th Avenue), with screenings daily at 1:00, 3:15, 5:40, 7:50 & 10:00.
“Fans of medieval multi-hypenate Hildegard von Bingen can at last burst into plainsong: Margarethe von Trotta herself has brought the abbess’s remarkable life and times to the screen. Von Trotta is crafting something more complex and layered than the life of a saint.” – Nicolas Rapold, Film Comment
“Sukowa’s fierce performance helps to make the character’s mystical yearning credible.”
—Stephen Farber, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Official Web site: visionthefilm.com
