Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe, published almost exactly 300 years ago, has written literature history and given its name to an entire literary genre. Defoe, who incidentally also wrote The Journal of the Plague Year, a work about the last great plague in London in 1665, which is currently being read more widely again, has his protagonist shipwrecked and stranded on a desert island, where he will spend 27 years and create his own world.
In the face of the Corona pandemic, reading Robinson Crusoe reveals astonishing ties with the present: both in the theme of the journey (of Robinson and the virus) and that of being trapped: the shipwreck becomes the lockdown. The filmmaker Alexander Kluge summarized it in an interview on April 5, 2020 as follows: "Now everyone sits on his island like Robinson and talks to his neighbor with Skype, just like we are now.
Director Anna Stiepani recognized Robinson's island during the lockdown phase in Bochum and its Schauspielhaus and set off on a cinematic expedition into the absurdities of a frozen world with a large part of the ensemble and the musician Karsten Riedel. In a series of eleven twisted, wondrous short films she creates a completely new, a Bochum Robinsonade full of poetry, beauty and anarchy.
- Me, a Robinson.
- Bochum Island Stories
- Concept, Direction, Editing: Anna Stiepani
- With: Jele Brückner, Konstantin Bühler, William Cooper, Dominik Dos-Reis, Anna Drexler, Ann Göbel, Gina Haller, Michael Lippold, Karin Moog, Mercy Dorcas Otieno, Bernd Rademacher, Bernd Rademacher, Romy Vreden, Lukas von der Lühe
- Concept, Direction, Editing: Anna Stiepani
- Concept, Direction, Editing: Anna Stiepani
- Costume design: Sofia Dorazio Brockhausen
- Music: Karsten Riedel
- Dramaturgy: Angela Obst
- Robinson: Jele Brückner, Konstantin Bühler, William Cooper, Anna Drexler, Ann Göbel, Gina Haller, Michael Lippold, Karin Moog, Mercy Dorcas Otieno, Bernd Rademacher, Lukas von der Lühe, Romy Vreden
- Papagei: Dominik Dos-Reis
- Voiceover: Bernd Rademacher