WE'RE NOT DONE YET!!!

Dear Friends, Supporters, and Musical Enthusiasts:

If you're disappointed our Indiegogo campaign ended, and did not have a chance yet to donate, it's not too late! We still have a campaign stretch goal of $5000 left to raise, which will allow us to target a greater number of festivals around the world and help us with additional post-production costs. You can still spread the word and help support our film!

“Dichterliebe: POETLOVE” is the first experiment of its kind: a narrative short film told entirely through classical songs. Using the beautiful 19th century song set “Dichterliebe”, or "Poet Love" by German romantics Robert Schumann and Heinrich Heine, the film centers on Henry, a young man who has just moved to New York and experiences his first love and first heartbreak, sending him into an emotional spiral until he finds his conduit in song.

The story told by these songs is heartwrenching, romantic, and timeless, just like the music. You don’t need to “get” classical music to understand and feel with these characters. All you need to do is watch, listen, and fall in love with some of the most beautiful music you might never otherwise have heard.

Fairly or unfairly, opera and classical music are seen by younger generations as elitist and old-fashioned.  Performances of classical songs have almost completely disappeared and draw few young faces. Classical music is dying in the United States and abroad. We want to reverse this trend.

Hello, and thank you so much for visiting and supporting our campaign! My name is David Paul, and I spend most of my days directing operas and teaching acting to singers at the Juilliard School. I feel very lucky to have grown up with classical music around me, but I’m keenly aware that most people didn’t have that experience, and they struggle to get into it. If we don’t find a compelling way to reach these people and make this music feel relevant again, it will disappear entirely.

When I started thinking about this project, my goal was crystal clear: to tell the story of these wonderful songs by Schumann in a modern, direct way, using the songs as our medium. I wanted to reach people who didn’t know this music, and have them experience how directly emotional, beautiful, and uncomplicated it is. I wanted people to connect directly to the characters, without any artifice or distance. I also wanted to have a maximum amount of creative freedom to fully express the extreme emotional bandwidth of this story and this music.

Film was, without a doubt, the ideal medium for this project. Not only is it the world’s most widespread art form; it’s also the most visceral and immediate: you can experience it on a giant screen, or you can watch it in bed on your phone. The sound surrounds you, and you forget you’re a spectator or a listener; you become a part of the world and the music. My incredible team, cast, and crew are working tirelessly to create Dichterliebe: POETLOVE with that central goal in mind: to bring this music and this story as powerfully as possible to as many people as possible. With your support, we can change the course of this uniquely beautiful art form!

The Music

Schumann’s music is as directly emotional and accessible as a modern-pop song, and a major reason he chose Heine’s poetry for the lyrics is its simple beauty, and the contemporary, timeless way he used the German language.  To that effect, I created a new translation into English that feels as contemporary today as Heine's language would have felt to his readers, but without sacrificing any of his poetic beauty.  Check out a sneak peak of the film’s music here!

https://soundcloud.com/david-paul/sets/poetlove-highlights

DIRECTOR : David Paul

German-American director David Paul has directed plays and operas throughout the US and abroad, including productions at Lincoln Center, Washington National Opera, North Carolina Opera, Washington's Shakespeare Theater Company, Music Academy of the West, and the Tel Aviv Summer Opera Festival. David has also devised original productions at Perseverance Theatre of Alaska and Columbia University, served on the artistic staff for the Shakespeare Theatre Company and the Metropolitan Opera, and is a faculty member at The Juilliard School and Columbia University. David Paul is a graduate of Columbia University and a native of Hamburg, Germany.

Justine’s career in the film industry began in physical production and corporate communications at The Weinstein Company where she worked on a number of award-winning films. As a producer, she has worked on a variety of features with major studios including FOX International, Miramax Films, Mandalay Pictures and Red Granite on films shot on location in Morocco, India, Vancouver, Los Angeles and Paris. Justine is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University, and originally from Warsaw, Poland,

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY : Josh Mckie

http://www.joshmckie.com.au/

PRODUCTION DESIGNERS : Peiyi Wong + Kate Noll

 Peiyi Wong  earned degrees from Cal Arts and Columbia University, and her work as a production designer and multi-media artist has been shown at REDCAT, Automata, HERE Arts Center, P.S. 122, The Ontological-Hysteric Theater, The Chocolate Factory, The Brick, The Prague Quadrennial, and multiple other venues. Her film design work has been screened at Tribeca, Toronto, and Asian-American International Film Festivals. 

http://www.peiyiameliawong.com

Kate Noll is an MFA graduate from the Yale School of Drama.  She has been a resident set designer at the Sundance Directors Lab where she workshopped the films Little Birds, My Brother the Devil, and Beasts of a Southern Wild.  Kate is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in Painting.

http://www.katenoll.com

COSTUME DESIGNER: Karen L. Young

A seasoned pro, Karen Young has worked for Disney, Marvel, Paramount, Universal, Warner Bros., and 20th Century Fox to name a few, on projects including “X-Men: First Class” with director Matthew Vaughn, “Captain America 2” with director Joss Whedon, and with Jeff Nichols on “Mud.” 

Renate Rohlfing is one of her generation's most sought-after collaborative pianists, working as a chamber musician and accompanist at some of the world's leading venues including Carnegie Hall, the Ravinia Festival, the Spoleto USA Festival, and Royal Albert Hall.  She has also worked as Assistant Conductor with the Los Angeles Opera.  Renate is a graduate of the Juilliard School.

Geoff Hahn is a singer/actor from Santa Barbara, CA, with classical voice training from the Juilliard School and Rice University.  Geoff has performed leading roles with the Aspen Music Festival and at Columbia University, and will join the Wolf Trap Opera in 2016.  He is currently based in Houston, Texas.

A New York-based actor and writer, Kerri Sohn's recent credits include a guest-star role on Oxygen's My Crazy Love, a College Humor video with over 100k views, and a national commercial for Yoplait.  An alumna of The Barrow Group's conservatory, Kerri has appeared in multiple productions at TBG theater, and has also performed improv comedy at UCB, the PIT, and around New York. 

Thanks to some initial seed funding, we have already shot all of our footage (watch our video for a sneak preview!), some of it in icy cold New Hampshire in February and the rest all over New York City in June. But in order to perform all the work necessary to finish the film and bring it to as many people as possible, we need your support. 

Specifically, we are seeking funding for the following:

• Deferred physical production costs, including equipment rentals, locations, and crew payments
• Post-production including:
• Digital color correction
• Sound design, FX + Foley, Additional Dialogue Recording
•  5.1 surround sound mix 
• Online and festival optimized delivery outputs
• Festival application fees (ranging up to $100 per festival submission) and related submission costs

Other Ways You Can Help

If you are unable to donate, there are many other way you can still support POETLOVE:

• Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram
• Post about our campaign on your favorite social media platform
• Share our project page with friends or family who love this music and want to see it alive and thriving
• Keep in touch!

Help us make a unique idea reality! Not only are you supporting an exciting project; you’ll also be able to say that you helped start a revolution: 

• With your help, POETLOVE can change classical music perceptions around the world and reinvigorate a dying art form.
• POETLOVE can inspire countless other projects to approach classical music creatively and for a young audience
• Younger generations will experience classical music on “their” terms, and in a format that speaks to them

All of these innovations are long overdue and deeply necessary. With your support, you can help us make them happen, right here, right now.