Pocahontas Returns

90 mins (in progress), digital cinema
Feature film
New York, USA & Santa Cruz, Bolivia

The feature film "Pocahontas Returns" explores lost values inside our contemporary world and the search for ancient wisdom via the mise-en-abyme of hypermodern New York and neo-baroque Santa Cruz in Bolivia via an interracial love story blended with Telenovela and performance art.

Nadja Verena Marcin's first feature film "Pocahontas Returns" has been awarded funding for the Fiscal Year 2019 by the New York State Council on the Arts. The project is fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, currently in progress and will be finished by 2019/2020.

How to Undress in Front of Your Husband

11.26 min, 4K digital cinema
New York, USA

The video-performance remake "How to Undress In Front Of Your Husband", replicated from a 1960s ‘how to’ video, depicts the do’s and don’ts of female disrobing, the original video turns this quotidian action into a performance under an authoritarian male gaze. Marcin recreates the video, playing all of the characters herself in delightful self-awareness, disrupting the original ‘educational’ trajectory of this narrative, while highlighting the absurdity of its creation in the first place.

“From narrator to peeping Tom husband, from the perfect wife to the undesirable wife, I am bending my characters with signifiers such as simulation of clothing, demeanor and improvisation,” Marcin reveals. “At the core, I aim to express that the full world of gender and the breadth of its expression has the potential to exist within one person, and that person is also the almighty oppressor or oppressed—depending on how we want to see it.”

(A.Nunes, 'A Sexist 1960s Film Remake Rewrites Cinema History', VICE Creator's Project, Sep 2016)

The project was supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, New York.


12.18 min, 5K digital cinema
Rheda/ Dortmund/ Marl, Germany

A visual homage to the sensual world of 70ies science-fiction, TRIPLE F is about power, jealousy and interpersonal war set amidst a heavenly castle garden, apocalyptic prefab architecture and historic downtown buildings of three female kingdoms and their rulers who puppeteer their people in a bitter war. The films characters – riddled with repressed desire – are obsessed with controlling and erasing the opponent as much as their own compatriots. By drawing parallels to the work of American filmmaker David Lynch, German filmmaker Christoph Schlingensief, as well as starring actress-muses Ela Paul (Unter Uns) and Denise M’Baye (Um Himmels Willen), Marcin’s melodramatic narration is subverted through a subtle irony, and sheds light on power, freedom, utopia and consumerism in a post-sensual world.

'The film, as a reflection and critique of ugly political and social dynamic, points to its unhealthy impact on the human mind, and the inevitability of its mechanisms in a service economy of the modern metropolis.'

(S.Corona, 'The Art without Gravity', Wallstreet Magazine, Nov 2013)

The film was commissioned by Film- und Media Foundation NRW, Düsseldorf.


13.34 min, 4K
New York, USA

//KIDS// narrates through a conceptual revision of the cult film 'Kids' (New York, 1995, Larry Clark) the interaction of a group of young adults; the smooth transition between shocking rituals and its adaption as lifestyle.


By the particular mix of citation, inversion, irony, twilight behaviors and exaggeration Marcin creates a society in which the word 'Kids' becomes a description of state; in which conformity and irresponsibility prevail, consciousness is forgotten. Contemporary phenomena such as the obsession with youth, the manipulative influence of media images and the continuing globalization in an alienated and diverted world emerge.


(Sarah Corona, Independent Curator, Bologna/ NYC)


12.00 min, HD
New York, USA

In the video ‘Hotel’ existentialism meets sensuality: The Superintendent invites four Trainees into the privacy of the ‘Hotel’, where they must undergo a series of theoretical and practical exercises, reminiscent of body art and performance lecture, administered by the Bellboy, the Superintendent and the Hotel Owner. Each Trainee is assessed according to his or her performance and willingness to submit to the Easy-to-Believe system.   

The seemingly ordinary shortfilm maneuvers into one of a live performance, captured on video, in which the setting of ‘Hotel’, as a semi private, semi public and semi personal space, becomes a metaphor for our culture: A society run by service, filled with competition and commercial interest. Beneath its surface: Alack of identity, individualism and motif. By creating a set of ‘personae’ who fully commit to this system, a comparison is drawn to psychological mechanisms and authorities in our own culture and education.

Loss of hearing

13.37 min, DV Cam
Los Angeles, USA

In 'Loss of hearing' the scenery is solely introduced by the use of light and sound. As the narration is placed in a white cube environment, stereotypical plot lines are being stylized and uncovered by an ironical undertone.

As the MANAGER WOMAN doesn't feel loved anymore, she tries to gain control over the MANAGER MAN. The MANAGER MAN is tired of these games and has affairs to escape from the pressure. Meanwhile the young and confused TWO SISTERS are planning a surf career and hang out with creepy guys in the surf shop.

'Loss of hearing' comments with caricature, provocation and irony on the loss of sense and emotion in mass media productions. Behind that level of irony the video work reveals a deep-seated romanticism.

Everything is nothing

12.24 min, HDV
Berlin, Germany

All scenes of 'Everything is nothing' take place inside the spaces of Cinema Babylon in Berlin. Through lightening, improvisation and choreography the structures of the rooms are used as a stage for theatrical scenes that bring the uncanny into a familiar space.

As a Girl errs through an Odyssey of encounters, she meets the DJ, the Gang, the Vampires, the Lady, the Student and other seductive characters inside of the Cinema Babylon. Meanwhile the DJ, positioned on the upper level, puts her down for having small breasts, the Gang, hiding between the seats, attempts to descend on her, simultaneously the Vampires are longing to infect her in the backstage. Instead of being destroyed, she seemingly gains more and more strength with every humiliation and develops into a witty and calm protagonist.

The encounters are determined by a sexual and psychological violence in a highly surreal, grotesque but authentic manner. Consequently, the thin line between verity of fact, subjectivity of perception, sense of guilt of a victim and willingness of self-destruction forms an unanswered question that leaves the viewer with an uneasy feeling of disruption.

As in Sciencefiction

6.34 min, HDV
Münster, Germany

In 'As in sciencefiction' nothing that happens is fiction. Performances with surreal elements form a fragmentary script, standing in relation to the Artist’s life.

As a young Woman is driving and playing inside the woods, we get introduced to an autarkic way of being and expression. Suddenly, the Mother appears in a staged duel on a wide open field. Afterwards, the young Woman finds herself quite lonesome in a big city. As a result, she tries to redefine herself in experience with the Dancer and the Boyfriend.

All scenes were captured through the eyes of a primarily cinematographic camera work. The ‘Other’ such as Mother, Dancer and Boyfriend appear in a fragmentary script that goes along with general difficulties of the coming of-age topic, specific to the conflict of a self-determined, remote life against the pressure of social expectations inherent in the Self and the personal environment.


15.15 min, DV Cam
Geneva, Switzerland


We pursue the woman, Marcin herself, on her way from the harbour to a park: 'The labyrinth of memory and cultural structures'. It is here, as it were in conflict with discursive labeling, that an erotic fantasy world primarily involving the body splits off, stimulated by the beauty of the day and the explicitly formulated attempt to set nature itself against the rational domestication of nature. This carries the woman, as she continues her route through the city and into the night, deeper and deeper into an associative flow of thoughts and fantasies.

Marcin's work articulates how basic human needs can break out from their confines and run free. They are then able, prompted by the rhythm of life itself, which is in turn evoked by running and the pulsation of blood at the same time the impulses behind eros to release themselves from the hyper-civilization of the world and to elicit in the self at least a temporary feeling of bliss.


Miss Ion Troja X

8.19 min, Mini DV
Wendover, USA

A young woman meets three young men in the desert. Underlaying different motivations they go together on a walk with the common goal to find 'Miss Ion Troja X'.

The non-place desert becomes a metaphor for a life's latitude and denotes the relativity of possibility, choice and action of an individual.

Royal Kids

19.23 min, DV Cam
Abendsberg, Germany

In 'Royal Kids' we meet Princess Nanabe and Prince Rudolpho, who are in the fairyland on the search for themselves. While Nanabe is looking for a prince, Rudolpho -jinxed into a bear- is hanging around the occident where the folks put him into a cage.

The surrealistic film evokes associations of a modern Pop fairytale. However the dialogues are in such a manner idiosyncratic that they remind of an inner diary. The bizarre fairy-world draws a comparison to the identity and finding phase in the actual world that has alike the fairy already a predominating structure with certain obligations.