When a German fairy flit to town

A friendly old woman in a big white wig enthralled a group of inquisitive school kids with the German folktale Frau Holle. Karla Wintermann from Dresden, Germany, as Frau Holle, retold the story of the two sisters, sitting amid fluffy cushions. As the old German tale goes, one sister, Marie, is hardworking and the other sister, lazy to the bone. Marie hits the jackpot for helping out Mother Hulda, the central character, who is known to cause snow fall from dusting her feathered mattress. The lazy sister, seething with jealousy, wants her own share of gold, but ends up in a pile of dirt. “The story is to help children understand the moral that nothing can be attained without hard work,” says Senya Mueller, who was involved with project assistance and translation for the event. The event, titled With the Fire Fairy in India, is a way for artistes from Dresden to contribute to the Indo-German cultural exchange, as  part of the celebrations of Chennai's Year of Germany. Apart from the story telling session, students from Ellen Sharma Memorial, St Georges, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Anna Nagar, participated in a film screening session. The group of students, a majority of whom were from the Tibetian settlements and orphanages, enjoyed the story of a fairy who tried to bring some warmth to her snow-capped kingdom and help her animal friends. The movie starred puppet characters, which were made by artistes from Dresden. The animation movie was captured frame-by-frame, with a total of 20,000 photos taken to complete the 15-minute movie. Senya translated the German dialogues to the children, all of whom enthusiastically nodded their heads in agreement when Anna Susanna, the protagonist fairy went to meet a dragon to learn how to breathe fire. After the screening, the over 90 students were split into eight groups. Each group was given a situation from the film and had to recreate it on their white charts with paints and crayons. The best paintings were awarded prizes and some of the paintings will be taken back to Dresden to be displayed.