Wunderkind: Carson McCullers

Wunderkind, Carson McCullers, a film by Claudia Müller and co-produced by the Carson McCullers Center, will have its premier in New York City the day before we screen it in McCuller’s adopted home town, Nyack. 2024, Germany/USA, 55 minutes

With her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers became a star of the New York literary scene and a celebrated child prodigy in the spring of 1940. At just 23 years of age, the author, who was born in Georgia, published a novel that gave outsiders in her society a voice and became a global success. The writer, who only lived to the age of 50 and suffered from serious illnesses throughout her life, left behind a relatively small but powerful oeuvre. A few of her other books included Reflections in a Golden Eye, A Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Café. Often referred to as the “author of loneliness”, she deals with topics in her works that are more relevant today than ever: racism, the search for identity, homosexuality, feminism and much more. It is above all the epic power of her language, but also her doubts about the expressive possibilities of language itself, which she expresses in all her stories, that make her work so special. Her gaze draws attention to things, situations and connections, but above all to characters who only appear as peripheral figures in other works. Her heroines and heroes are those who are otherwise overlooked and whose inner conflict she was able to put into words. This film aims to bring to light the work of the most famous unknown in American literature.

Carson McCullers lived in Nyack from 1945 to her death in 1967. She is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.

There will be a discussion after the film with director Claudia Müller and producer Nick Norwood, who is also the executive director of the McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians.

 Presented by Rivertown Film and the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University.

About the filmmaker, Claudia Müller

Claudia Müller is based in Berlin. Her most recent film, Elfriede Jelinek: Language Unleashed, a documentary about the Austrian Nobel Laureate in Literature, won last year’s equivalent of both the German and Austrian Oscars for best documentary. This gave her the opportunity to make a new film of her choosing, and she chose Carson McCullers. Her work focuses exclusively on documentary films about women artists.

About the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians

The Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, is dedicated to preserving the legacy of Carson McCullers; nurturing writers and musicians, educating young people; and fostering literary, musical, artistic, and intellectual culture in the United States and abroad. It also owns Carson McCullers’ childhood home in Columbus, Georgia, as well as the home in Nyack where Carson McCullers lived from 1945 to 1967, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.