About the Film
Hildegard Speaks
Hildegard Speaks is a documentary film by Michael M. Conti and theologian-author Dr. Annette Esser, produced in collaboration with the Scivias Institute for Art and Spirituality. The film brings to life nine meditative texts written by Esser in the voice of Saint Hildegard of Bingen — each one composed for a specific stage of the Hildegard Way pilgrimage route in the Nahe Valley of Germany.
In each text, Hildegard speaks in the first person — about her childhood, her visions, her art of healing, her entrance into monastic life, her teacher Jutta of Sponheim, her preaching tours, and the founding of her Rupertsberg women’s monastery. The directness and poetic brevity of Esser’s writing, combined with Conti’s cinematography of the German landscape and period reenactments, creates an immersive portrait of one of history’s most extraordinary women.
The Origin of the Film
The project began in 2017, when the Naheland tourist organization asked Annette Esser — a woman theologian who had spent more than 25 years studying Hildegard of Bingen — to write short audio texts for the ten stages of the newly opened Hildegard Way pilgrimage route. Rather than writing about the landscape, Esser wrote from within it: nine texts in which Hildegard herself speaks, in the first person, about the places and experiences that shaped her life.
When Esser read the texts aloud to pilgrimage groups on the Hildegard Way, the response was immediate. The first-person voice reached people differently than academic writing could. She began searching for a filmmaker to bring the texts to life visually — and found Michael M. Conti through the Facebook page of the International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies, where his earlier film The Unruly Mystic: Saint Hildegard (2014) had already established him as a committed voice in Hildegard scholarship and documentary filmmaking.
Filming on the Hildegard Way
In the summer of 2019, Conti and his wife and co-producer Heather Boyle joined Esser and the International Hildegard Pilgrimage of the Scivias Institute in Germany. What began as a documentary shoot became a community event. Pilgrims from the United States, South Africa, Ireland, and Germany participated on camera alongside local performers and scholars.
Among those filmed: singer Susanne Förster performing Hildegard songs with her harp; Nico Gäns from Sponheim dressed in a medieval monk’s robe in the Minster Church; musical actress Susanne Prass traveling from Salzburg to portray the young Hildegard pilgrim; and Cologne historians who crafted 12th-century monk and nun costumes for the occasion. Harvard scholar Dr. Beverly Mayne Kienzle later contributed educational notes for viewers.
The ten resulting videos — produced transcontinentally between Boulder, Colorado and Bad Kreuznach, Germany — go beyond the original nine audio texts to include Esser’s meditation on Viriditas (Hildegard’s concept of the greening power of life), a poem by Australian author Colleen Keating, a speech by Sr. Hiltrud Gutjahr OSB at Hildegard’s shrine in Eibingen, and an interview with Esser at the ruins of Dalburg Castle.
Hildegard Speaks in Nine Chapters
Each chapter of the film corresponds to a stage of the Hildegard Way pilgrimage route, where Hildegard — in Esser’s words — speaks about:
- Precious stones and the heavenly Jerusalem
- Her family and childhood
- Her visions
- Her art of healing
- Her entrance into the Monastery of St. Disibod
- Her teacher Jutta of Sponheim
- Pilgrimages and her preaching tours
- How she gained fame as a seeress
- The founding of her Rupertsberg Women’s Monastery
Premieres and Screenings
The English version of Hildegard Speaks premiered virtually in September 2020 as part of a twelve-day Virtual Pilgrimage with Saint Hildegard, attended by more than 100 participants from around the world — a remarkable response made possible by the circumstances of the pandemic year.
The German version, Hildegard Spricht, had its theatrical premiere at the Hildegard Week in Bad Kreuznach, Germany in August 2022. The English version, Hildegard Speaks, premiered at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, Colorado in 2023.
The Companion Book
Alongside the film, Annette Esser published Saint Hildegard Speaks — Hildegard spricht, a multilingual companion book containing the nine audio texts in their original German, Esser’s English translation, and translations into French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch. The book is designed for use on the pilgrimage route itself — guides reading aloud to international pilgrims at each stage of the Hildegard Way. Available through the Saint Hildegard Way and Crazy Wisdom Publishing.
Now also you, oh human, speak out aloud about what you see and hear.
— Hildegard von Bingen, Liber Scivias
About Annette Esser
Dr. Annette Esser is a German theologian, artist, and founder of the Scivias Institute for Art and Spirituality in Cologne. She has devoted more than 25 years to studying the life and work of Hildegard of Bingen — translating Barbara Newman’s landmark monograph Sister of Wisdom into German in 1992, completing her Master’s thesis on Hildegard at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1995, organizing international Hildegard conferences and pilgrimages since 2009, and creating the clay sculpture of Hildegard that serves as the emblem of the Hildegard Way pilgrimage publications. She is the author of the Hildegard of Bingen Pilgrimage Book (Liturgical Press, Minnesota, 2022) and the principal writer of the nine meditation texts that form the heart of Hildegard Speaks.
The films, books, and tours are Crazy Wisdom Films’ gifts to remind us of the unruly mystics who stood strong and were brave, open, and eternally wide awake — their messages continue to inspire and challenge today’s status quo. Learn more about the mission behind Crazy Wisdom Films.
♥