Confessions of Pia Antonia

Self-taught artist and independent mother Pia Antonia Klinkhammer engages in a conversation about art making and self expression with students from a German art school, who pay her a visit in her hometown. Sharing with them her life experiences, she sheds light on her unique painting style informed by her rebellion against the philistine upbringing in the suburbs of Cologne. By capturing Pia Antonia Klinkhammer's works on 16mm film, accompanied by her son's music, the students create what eventually becomes her only lifetime solo exhibition.

  • Artiom Zavadovsky
    Director
  • Artiom Zavadovsky
    Writer
  • Pia Antonia Klinkhammer
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short, Student
  • Runtime:
    14 minutes 22 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 22, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    Germany
  • Country of Filming:
    Germany
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    16mm
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1.37:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Academy of Media Arts Cologne
  • art200: international queer culture festival
    Bucharest
    Romania
    October 19, 2024
    World Premiere
    Official Selection
  • blicke - filmfestival des ruhrgebiets
    Bochum
    Germany
    November 21, 2024
    German Premiere
    gender&queer-Preis
  • XXS-Kurzfilmfestival
    Dortmund
    Germany
    December 12, 2024
    Official Selection
  • Internationales Frauen Film Fest
    Dortmund
    Germany
    April 3, 2025
    Spot on, NRW!
Distribution Information
  • Academy of Media Arts Cologne
Director Biography - Artiom Zavadovsky

ARTIOM ZAVADOVSKY (*1987 in Bălți Republic of Moldova) works interdisciplinary with performance, documentary theatre and filmmaking, video art and drag. Interests of their artistic practice include social, political and economic realities of the marginalised, radical queering as resistance, and personal memories as an activation tool for collective consciousness. Currently, they live in and work from Cologne.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

In 2019, while touring with a show of our Moldovan theatre collective in Germany, theatre sound technician Janis Klinkhammer told us, “My mother is a painter and she has painted Jesus”. After seeing the respective painting, I thought to myself, “I must meet her one day. I want to know what has inspired her”. A few years later I was admitted to the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, where I was given the opportunity to shoot on 16 mm film. I knew that Janis’s mother, who raised him on her own, lived in a small town of Rösrath just 20 minutes away from Cologne. I knew that that was the moment. That is how I met Pia Antonia Klinkhammer, a self-taught painter who had developed a unique style of painting.

After meeting her and getting acquainted with her paintings, I realised that I wanted to capture her art and stories on film. Departing from the idea that by the age of 63 Pia Antonia had never had a solo exhibition, I was compelled by the idea of documenting her art, while also understanding where her inspirations came from, thus creating an archive. After knowing her better as person, I wanted to share her wit and humour with others, too. I believed that Pia Antonia deserved recognition. Likewise, I wanted to feature her son’s never-published-before music.

Little did I know and could ever imagine that this film would become something bigger. In January 2024, we finally managed to organise a screening at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, which Pia Antonia Klinkhammer attended and where she was showered in love, recognition and admiration by the audience. On February 1st, she passed away from a sudden heart attack at home in Rösrath, a small philistine town outside of Cologne where she grew up, lived her entire life and made art like no one else.

Artiom Zavadovsky
Director of Confessions of Pia Antonia