The Production Team
Oliver Becker - Director
Oliver Becker, born in 1967, started making short films at the
age of fourteen; these were shown at festivals in Germany and
abroad up to the mid-nineties and received numerous prizes. In
1993 the film festival in Bilbao showed a retrospective of his
works. In 1995 Oliver Becker made his first documentary film,
"Towards the Light," a portrait of the Russian composer
Alexander Scriabin, which was commissioned by WDR, ARTE and
ORF. Since then he has made a large number of programmes
devoted to personalities from the field of classical music,
such as Sergei Prokofiev, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Richard
Wagner. For six years now, Oliver Becker has been filming
concerts and operas as director. He has made numerous
programmes for clients in Germany and abroad, filming in
Morocco, France, Austria, Germany, Finland and the USA. Since
November 2004, Oliver Becker has been filming all new
productions at the Comic Opera in Berlin. In 2005, he presented
his first full-length film, "Leuchtende Liebe - lachender Tod -
das Familientheater der Wagners". Currently he is working on a
90-minute film about Dimitri Shostakovich.
Ellen Fellmann - Director
Ellen Fellmann, born in 1968, works as a director and composer
at the interface between music and video art. After receiving a
musical training and studying musicology and philosophy, she
started to compose music for film and theatre. Since 1999 she
has developed her own audiovisual form of composition, for
which she has received several prestigious grants (including
the Capital Cultural Fund, Darmstadt Summer Courses for New
Music, Récollets International Paris). As a guest artist in the
electronics studio at the TU in Berlin, she started to create
space-related compositions. Her works have been performed at
international festivals (including the Berlin Film Festival,
VideoArt Festival Locarno, EMAF Osnabrück, Künstlerhaus Vienna,
Maison de la Culture Montreal). In June 2005 her multi-channel
audio-video composition "Pixelinvasion" was shown at the ZKM in
Karlsruhe. In the field of television, she has specialised in
filming concerts since 2002. Her numerous productions in
Germany and abroad include classical orchestral and chamber
music as well as world music and opera.
Rolf Rische - Scriptwriter and editor
Rolf Rische was born in Stuttgart in 1962. He already wrote for
the Vaihinger Kreiszeitung (VKZ) newspaper as a school pupil.
Practicals, military service, trainee work with the VKZ and a
course of study at the Deutsche Journalistenschule in Munich
followed. In 1986 Rische took up his first post as editor with
the Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper. In 1987 he moved to SWF
television in Baden-Baden, and later to the ARD cultural
channel Eins Plus, where he also worked as a studio director
and film author. In addition to "theme evenings" (such as one
on the 1988 Donaueschingen Music Festival), he made films such
as "2000 Träume - der steinige Weg zum Rockstar" (1989, 45
min.) and "Tamara Danz, Rocksängerin aus Ostberlin" (1990, 30
min.). In 1992, Rische became head of the youth department at
DW-TV in Berlin, and was then put in charge of programming for
Society and Culture. Since 2003 he has headed the newly created
department Society and Entertainment, and is thus in charge of
the daily magazine show euromaxx and the music
show popXport. He is also active as a
scriptwriter and musician. Among other things, he has written
scripts for the Sat.1 sitcom "Wir vom Revier" (1999) and the
ARD series "Pfeifer" (2000). Rische has received two journalism
prizes: the Encouragement Award of the Friedrich and Isabel
Vogel Foundation (1987) and the Television Prize awarded by the
RIAS Berlin Commission (1995).
Henning Brümmer - Director of Photography
Cameraman Henning Brümmer achieved international renown
above all for the film "The White Diamond" (2004) by Werner
Herzog. The New York Times wrote that this HD production was
"filled with breathtaking images" and TIME also emphasised the
quality of the camerawork: "A symphony of pristine images."
"The Irish Barbecue" (2000), which won the prize for the best
film at the film festival in Milan, and the English reality
series "The Heist" (2003), which made headlines around the
world, were also internationally successful. Brümmer, born in
1971, has worked with major directors such as Christoph
Schlingensief, Carlo Rola, Zoltan Spirandelli and Andres Veiel,
on both movies and documentaries. He has also made promotion
films for Lufthansa, Colgate, Deutsche Post and Reemtsma. He
studied at the Hamburg Film School and taught there until 1999
as an assistant to Michael Ballhaus.
www.la-gente-agentur.de
Jörg Jeshel - Director of Photography
Jörg Jeshel was born in Berlin in 1943 and made his passion -
film - his profession. He is a graduate of the Staatliche
Fachschule für Optik und Fototechnik in Berlin. Since 1975 he
has been working as a freelance cameraman for documentary films
and movies. He has been awarded the prestigious Grimme Prize a
number of times: "Allee der Kosmonauten" (2000), "Kopfleuchten"
(2000), "Schwarzwaldhaus" (2003). In 1992 he received the
German Camera Prize for the film "Wer hat Angst vor Rot Gelb
Blau?"
Martin Sauer - Sound Engineer
Martin Sauer, born in Berlin in 1958, studied sound
engineering and oboe at the Berlin University of the Arts. From
1982 to 1992 he was sound engineer at the van Geest Studio in
Heidelberg. After three years as director at the French label
Erato, he became the chairman of the Hamburg record company
Teldec in 1988. Since 2002 Martin Sauer has lived in Berlin,
working as producer of the classical label "harmonia mundi
France" and as a freelance producer and partner at "teldex
Studio Berlin". He is an internationally reputed producer
specialising in recordings of classical music, ranging from old
to new music. He has been awarded five Grammies (three of them
for recordings with Kent Nagano) and numerous other prizes for
his work. At present he works regularly with conductors such as
Daniel Barenboim, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Kent Nagano and René
Jacobs, as well as with renowned orchestras, choirs, singers
and instrumentalists.
www.teldexstudio.de
Bernd Euscher - Editor
After Berlin-born Bernd Euscher completed his schooling and
studies, he worked in various positions as assistant editor.
Soon he was being hired as editor by well-known cinema and TV
directors such as Rudolf Thomé, Andres Veiel and Jeanine
Meerapfel. Bernd Euscher has worked as a freelance editor since
1988. His area of work includes cinematic trailers, video clips
and commercials.
www.bernd-euscher.de
Bernhard Fleischer - Executive Producer
Bernhard Fleischer was born in 1971 in Salzburg, Austria, the
birthplace of Mozart. As a very young child, he already went to
the legendary Karajan concerts at the Salzburg Festival with
his mother. After finishing school, he worked as a freelance
production manager for various television productions. In
Munich he completed a course as media marketing administrator.
In 1998 he founded the TV production company "Bernhard
Fleischer Moving Images," which specialises in high-quality
music programmes. His biggest success so far has been "Anna
Netrebko - The Woman, The Voice", one of the best-selling DVDs
in the classical field.
Martin Missfeldt - Animation Artist
Martin Missfeldt was born in September 1968 in
Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. From 1989 to 1995 he studied Free
Painting at the Berlin University of Arts as a pupil in the
master class of Georg Baselitz. Between 1992 and 2002 Missfeldt
gathered experience with interactive media in a variety of
projects. In 2002 he founded the multimedia company Duplicon,
which specialises in cultural and art-historical themes. Among
his clients are the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the
Berlin Gemäldegalerie, the Museum für Moderne Kunst in
Frankfurt and Bacardi Germany. His working motto: "Computer
images do not have the »haptic aura« of original paintings, but
at least they don't make as much mess. And they are easier to
store."
www.duplicon.de
Prof. Gerhard Hahn - Hahn Film AG - Animations
Hahn Film, one of the leading animated-film studios in
Europe, was founded by Prof. Gerhard Hahn in 1980. The company
has been based in Berlin since 1992. Hahn Film strives for high
quality both in classic 2D animation with paper and pencil and
in CGI productions. Prof. Gerhard Hahn has directed cinematic
successes like "Werner - Beinhart", "Werner - Volles Rooäää",
"Asterix in Amerika", and the internationally popular TV series
"Bibi Blocksberg", "Benjamin Blümchen", "Urmel", "Renaade",
"Wildlife", "Simsalagrimm" and "Gnarfs". Hahn Film also
produces animated advertisements, music-video clips and
computer games.
www.hahnfilm.com
May 2006
Source: Deutsche Welle