Laureen Laser Filmmaker from Münster/ Offenbach, Germany

That’s a really difficult question for me to answer. There were probably many different things that brought me into the arts. My parents are not artists themselves, but they always encouraged me to express my creativity and took me seriously — many are not that lucky. I was still very young when I was given my first MiniDV camera. I also spent hours drawing and putting on plays. It has always been a desire of mine to share my views on the world with others in poetic ways. This way, I meet many like-minded people who want to do the same thing. That’s probably what got me started an keeps me going: The connections that are made through art and that are incredibly valuable to me. And the things that the creative process keeps teaching me about others, the world and myself.

I wrote Cornelia a letter, but I didn’t know her address. When I was on my way to visit my uncle in Italy, I took a detour through Volterra and asked around to see if anyone could give her my letter. At that point, Cornelia hadn’t been living there for long and I didn’t find anyone who knew her. A cook in a restaurant thought I was looking for a particular mushroom (‘Cornelia Funghi?’). After some confusion, the letter ended up in the right mailbox after all and Cornelia invited me. Can you believe it? Sometimes I still can’t believe it actually happened.

This question, on the other hand, is very easy to answer. Fraggina was electrifying for me: the light, the smells, the animals, the plants, the conversations with others — all of that almost made me sleepless because I didn’t want to miss a single moment. The pictures and stories just kept coming to me in a way that happens only very rarely. Everything suddenly seemed very easy and at the same time very meaningful. Almost as if I had somehow landed in one of Cornelia’s stories myself. And really that’s that’s exactly what happened — after all, stories are not only written with words.

A full roll of film, sound recordings (especially the loud chirping of cicadas), plant-printed fabrics, a bottle of red wine, new friendships, new found self-confidence, and a sense of everything somehow being possible along with the certainty of returning very soon, the thought of which always makes me happy.