Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin
at Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin
FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET]
Apr 14, 2024 2pm to 7pm Looped Screening, Auditorium HKW Berlin
Apr 9, 2024 7pm Opening

I am Nicolaas and this is my Showreel.
Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin
at Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin
FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET]
Apr 14, 2024 2pm to 7pm Looped Screening, Auditorium HKW Berlin
Apr 9, 2024 7pm Opening



Facades* of a street in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg (around 2010). Shot from an apartment window on level 2 or 3, where I stayed for a stop at a berlin friend (unfortunately couldn’t remember who and where it was) on the way back from a “driving home for Christmas visit”.
And same facades (re)searched and found today (2024): Oderberger Straße – anyone here, who remembers living there once?
*First still from upcoming December Diary Short Film „Like Horses Standing in the Rain“ (shot in December of 2008-2017/2021, edited 2012/2015/2019/2023).
2024 we are celebrating two Anniversaries:
15 Years Premiere of NEUSEENLAND* (Vienna Shorts, 2009) and
10 Years Premiere of LEAVING MONOCHROMIA (Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, 2014).
Therefore an #offer especially to all equivocal email-spamming-film festivals with fake “discounts” of their #submission #fee:
Both works will be available for festival or cinema theater presentation with a 50% discount of the screening fee! Additionally all other films from the ETTG catalog will celebrate with a discount of 10% booked in Q1 2024!
Just send your request to endjoy@ettg.be.
*NEUSEENLAND [2008, HDV, 5′, GER, STEREO, COLOR, 16:9]
In 2008 I strolled with the great Jan Eichberg through the almost completely deserted #Heuersdorf – on the edge of the #Schleenhain brown coal mine in southern #Leipzig, a Leerdammer-like hollowed-out area that will be used for tourism as #Neuseenland after mining has ended some years later.
We had the new HDV camera and a Tascam from HFBK with us to capture images and atmosphere for our story, a kind of homage to #resignation:
A young person no longer wants to continue abroad, he wants to return to his homeland, knowing full well that it days are numbered.
This is told in a voice over by the protagonist himself, for whom we were able to get none other than André Mulzer. Back in Hamburg, he spontaneously recorded the text into Jan’s cassette recorder that he had inherited from his grandfather – three takes in the unisex toilet of third floor HFBK (the only quiet place at that moment).


Nov 17 10pm Bali Kino, Kasseler Dokumentarfilm- und Videofest Cinémoon

Okt 31 2023 2pm CWB Paris
Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin – New Cinema and Contemporary Art
Official Selection: FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET]
“Once in a Blue Moon”
Opening: Okt 7 2023 6p Kunsthaus Hamburg
Exhibition: Okt 7 – Nov 4 2023 presenting
“36KFRGB” (Celebrating 10th Anniversary)
All Seasons, All Episodes – The complete Series Forever


Okt 2-6 2023 film and writing seminar with Anne Döring & Nicolaas Schmidt, HFBK Hamburg

„FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET]“
ART STUDIO 55
Apr 01 Limassol, Cyprus
QUERGESTREIFT FILMFEST
Apr 14-23 Konstanz, Germany
GRAN LUX SESSION DE VISIONNAGE 50
Apr 29 Viewing Session N°50, Gran Lux, tramway T1 & T3 : arrêt / stop place Bellevue, Saint-Etienne, France
NNYOC GALLERY
Jun 03 INFLORESCENCE at “plz make sense out of it”, NNYOC Gallery Reykjavik, Iceland
XPOSED INTL. QUEER FILM FESTIVAL
Jun 15-18 Berlin, Germany
KLASSENTREFFEN FESTIVAL
Jun 15.+16. 14:00, Aula HFBK Hamburg
MEETINGS OF YOUNG EUROPEAN CINEMA
June 23 20.30, Open Air Cinema of Goethe-Institute Bulgaria, Sofia arteurbanacollectif.com
35K FILMCLUB
Autumn 23, DFFB, Berlin, Germany

2023 we are celebrating a Double Anniversary:
Ten years release of BREAK [Slowreel 04] and our “Series for Everyone” 36KFRGB [36000 FRAMES RGB].
Therefore an #offer especially to all equivocal email-spamming-film festivals with fake “discounts” of their #submission #fee:
Both works will be available for festival or cinema theater presentation with a 50% discount of the screening fee! Additionally all other films from the ETTG catalog will celebrate with a discount of 25%!
Interested? Just send your request to endjoy@ettg.be.

Opening 16.12.2022 6pm
Come and don’t see my recent work!
17. Dezember 2022 – 22. Januar 2023 Kunsthaus Hamburg, Klosterwall 15

First Films Festival Sat 19 Nov 3:20pm, Golden Age Cinema, Sydney
FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET]
„[…] if you think you’re in the wrong film, sit tight, it will soon make sense. […]“
filmink.com.au/reviews/first-time
„FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET]“
CINEMANCIA FESTIVAL METROPOLITANO DE CINE MEDELLÍN
Sep 01-10 Medellín, Antioquia, Columbia
26TH QUEER LISBOA FILM FESTIVAL
Sep 16-24 Queer Art Competition, Cinema São Jorge, Cinemateca Portuguesa Lisbon, Portugal
25FPS FILM FESTIVAL ZAGREB
Sep 22-24 Zagreb, Croatia
5TH FILMFEST SUNDSVALL
Sep 28-Oct 2 Sundsvall, Sweden
30TH FILMFEST HAMBURG
Sep 29-Oct 08 Hamburg, Germany
BLACK CANVAS FILM FESTIVAL MEXICO
Sep 30-Oct 09 Mexico City, Mexico
17TH UNDERDOX FILMESTIVAL MUNICH
Oct 10 7:30pm Werkstattkino München
39TH KASSELER DOKEST
Nov 19 10:15pm Bali Kino Kassel
FIRST FILMS SYDNEY
Nov 18-20 Golden Age Sydney, Australia „BELIEVE“ & „FIRST TIME“
QUEER WAVE FESTIVAL CYPRUS
Nov 25-Dec 04 (closing film) Nicosia and Limassol, Cyprus
„INFLORESCENCE“ AT TANZAHOi HAMBURG
Sep 11 17:00 „Opening Remarks“, Metropolis Kino, Hamburg, Germany
Sunday Oct 2nd, 2022: World Premiere of our cinema installation CINEMOON – right after FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET] at Filmfest Hamburg.
10pm Metropolis Kino Hamburg


mit „THERNST – The Lottery“
Aug 05-07, 2022 12-22 Uhr Projektraum Flutgraben e.V.
Vernissage: 5.8., 16-22 Uhr
Am Flutgraben 3, Berlin
Thalia Kino Dresden
„Wenn FilmvorführerInnen wie gebannt 50min am Projektionsfenster stehen und den Abhörmonitor immer lauter drehen, wenn Nanoplexbetreiber danach wochenlang ketterauchend Dmd Kiu Lidt hören, dann haben sie es mit FIRST TIME von Nicolaas Schmidt zu tun bekommen und damit die schönsten Minuten beim diesjährigen @filmfestdresden.
Nun schenken wir diesen filmischen Traum zurück. Euch. Am Freitag um 21.45 Uhr im Rahmen der kurz.film.tour organisiert von der wunderbaren @agkurzfilm.“
The international jury composed of the artistic director of the New York Film Festival, Dennis Lim, the award-winning Spanish independent producer Lluís Miñarro, the French producer Judith Lou Lévy, the Argentine director Eduardo Williams and the Spanish director Tuixén Benet, assigns the award for
Best Feature Film in the New Visions section to FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET] by Nicolaas Schmidt.
„A film with a rigorous and playful form that creates tension and mystery with minimal means. It draws the viewer’s attention to small details and gestures, opening a space for reflection on the experience of temporality, on the codes of the story, on language and on the history of cinema.“
A Special Mention of the National Union of Italian Film Critics (SNCCI) jury, composed of Emanuele Di Nicola and Gaia Simionato, goes to FIRST TIME [The Time for All but Sunset – VIOLET] by Nicolaas Schmidt.
„The film represents the meeting on the subway between two teenagers through a language without words, made up only of songs, looks and sharing a common space. A middle ground, the puberty, before the definition of a precise sexuality identity. It’s an enigmatic and suspended tale, which generates in the audience the same pre-erotic tension that envelops the characters. A story that opens a situation without closing, that asks a question without answer, addressed to the young protagonists and to us. It does with a courageous and experimental style that brings film back to its primary form, made of music and imperceptible but full of meaning gestures. „First Time“ by Nicolaas Schmidt shows that cinema is not just dialogue, it’s mostly the art of the image.“
„A minimalist journey through the discrepancies of our time.
sentieriselvaggi.it
[…]
A mid-length film that Chantal Akerman would have liked. Out of the public sphere, where every image points to the wrong thing, out of the isolation of a technology incapable of capturing the nuances of a sunset, out of the despair of a vicious circle in which we continue to be pulled like hypnotized passengers.“
„In the simplicity of the narrative structure, the absence of dialogue, the sobriety of the means of expression, and the perfect use of music, the film achieves an admirable intensity. Proof of the arbitrariness with which rational thought articulated in speech has historically been privileged as the preferred, if not sole, vehicle of meaning. Nothing in First Time is mediated by words, and it is the images that filter through the tension of first love and the shadows of a sexuality with which one has perhaps yet to be confronted.“
artribune.com