The Production Team

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, 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 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).

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 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, 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

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 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 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

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