Christoph Rüter

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Filmmaker Christoph Rüter

Christoph Rüter (born January 1, 1957 in Gelsenkirchen ) is a German documentary filmmaker and author . His focus is on documentaries on, among others, Thomas Brasch , Klaus Michael Grüber , Heiner Müller and Hans Blumenberg , which he produced for various television stations, but also for the cinema.

life and work

Study and training

In 1976 Rüter graduated from high school in Münster (Westphalia) and in the same year began studying theater studies , philosophy and psychology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . His interest in theater was aroused on the one hand by the political events surrounding the so-called German Autumn and by various student jobs at the theater and at Bavaria Film . In April 1980 he went to West Berlin and continued his studies there.

theatre

In 1983 Rüter met the theater director Hans Neuenfels and became his assistant director . In 1985, Hans Neuenfels took over the Freie Volksbühne West Berlin as director and made Rüter one of the two dramaturges at the house. As a result, there was a collaboration with outstanding playwrights and directors such as Thomas Brasch, Christof Nel , Hans Neuenfels, Heiner Müller and Bob Wilson, who formed the basis for his later filmmaking.

documentary

In the summer of 1989, Rüter left the Freie Volksbühne and worked freelance from then on. In October 1989 Heiner Müller invited him to attend rehearsals for Hamlet and Müller's own play Hamletmaschine at the Deutsches Theater in East Berlin . Rüter, who obviously suspected that something special was happening in the theater scene in the East, began to accompany the rehearsals with the camera. Favored by external circumstances - during the seven-month sample was not just the GDR under, but changed as a result the working conditions at the renowned East Berlin stage - was with the film The Time is out of joint / The time is out of joint a Historically complex document about a key production by Heiner Müller, in which Ulrich Mühe shines both as Hamlet and as a speaker in front of the demonstrators on Alexanderplatz . The in-house production was purchased by WDR in 1991 and shown at various festivals around the world. "And like a rock in the surf: Heiner Müller, who puffs his cigar and always has the situation analytically and dialectically under control ... The documentation is exciting ... through the hard montage of theater images and historical tableaus, which even the best theater cannot manage “, Wrote Eckhard Roelcke in ZEIT

In 1998, the film L'Homme de Passage (WDR / Arte ) was made about the theater director Klaus Michael Grüber , who was considered camera shy and had not allowed TV recordings during rehearsals until then. Christoph Rüter, on the other hand, was allowed to accompany him with the camera for a year. “It's a really wonderful film. Because it is the film of a silent lover and enthusiast, ”wrote Gerhard Stadelmaier in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .

Personal contact was also decisive for another artist portrait. In 2004 Rüter made a film about Angela Winkler on her 60th birthday for WDR and Arte . Benjamin Henrichs wrote about this in the Süddeutsche Zeitung : "... you saw the artist herself, trying to explain the inexplicable - which led to some wonderful new Winkler scenes."

With the film Raw Material , Christoph Rüter turned to a topic outside of the theater. His portrayal of the writer Jörg Fauser , who died in an accident on a motorway near Munich in 1987, pays homage to the "Clint Eastwood of German literature" ( Franz Dobler ), in which Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre and Wiglaf Droste have their say alongside Dobler . Der Spiegel wrote: "With Dobler as the vanguard, Christoph Rüter's exciting documentary undertakes a journey to the stations and people in Fauser's life and honors him on the day of his death."

In 2007, the great German actor Ulrich Mühe, whom Rüter had come to know and appreciate on the occasion of the Heiner Müller production Hamletmaschine at the Deutsches Theater, died. At Ulrich Mühes request, Rüter's film The Time is out of Joint was shown alongside Funny Games by Michael Haneke at the memorial event in the Schaubühne on Lehniner Platz , at which numerous celebrities, including Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and Tom Cruise , attended. A year later, Rüter treated the politically active actor Mühe for Arte in the film Now I'm Alone .

Rüter had been in close contact with Heiner Müller since the Hamlet rehearsals. On his 80th birthday (2009), Christoph Rüter and his co-author Thomas Irmer created a documentary that re-deciphered Müller's work on his most famous play, the Hamlet Machine . “Christoph Rüter, already trained in dealing with theater people through documentary films about Thomas Brasch, Klaus Michael Grüber, Angela Winkler and Ulrich Mühe, has undoubtedly delivered a masterpiece here, in association with Thomas Irmer. The phenomenal Heiner Müller, so familiar, so strange, 'the face naked, the poetry the visor', ”wrote Renate Stinn in epd media .

The writer Thomas Brasch died on November 3, 2001. In 1988 Brasch and Rüter met each other during the production of Leonce and Lena ( Georg Büchner ) under the direction of Christof Nel at the theater of the Freie Volksbühne. After a first portrait for 3sat on Brasch's 60th birthday (2005), Rüter presented BRASCH - The Wishes and Fears, a film about the author who died young and which premiered in the Panorama section at the 2011 Berlinale, five years later . Decisive for this film were the discovery of many DV cassettes from the private collection of Thomas Brasch. For many years, the writer had repeatedly pointed a small camera at himself - sometimes he was filmed by Rüter or others. These video logs became the basis of the new film. Brasch gives an account of what should be "wanted" and "feared" on his part. “Nothing of the usual assurances about the past, especially no conversations with contemporary witnesses. There is only one person talking here, says Rüter, and that is Brasch himself, ”wrote Kerstin Decker in the Tagesspiegel .

Even before the coachman film Babylon Berlin caused a sensation, Christoph Rüter was interested in crime stories about pre-war Germany, especially about the Nazi era. For his documentary detective stories and the Third Reich , he visited the authors Philip Kerr , Volker Kutscher and Dominique Manotti , who in various ways linked a crime story with the real horrors of the Nazi era and, in the opinion of many, violated a taboo: no conversation about the Third Reich .

From 2012 Rüter worked on a film about the Lübeck- born philosopher Hans Blumenberg , of which neither an interview nor film material exist. Only two photos found their way to the public. Christoph Rüter, who himself attended a semester at Blumenberg in Münster in 1984, was fascinated by Blumenberg's portrayal of philosophy. He looked for and found other Blumenberg students, including a copywriter and a taxi driver, who, accompanied by the Blumenberg researcher Rüdiger Zill , describe their personal view of Blumenberg in a two-hour philosophical road movie : Hans Blumenberg - The Invisible Philosopher . In addition, one hears previously unpublished sound recordings from Blumenberg's lectures in the film. Gregor Dotzauer from Tagesspiegel wrote: “What a suicidal endeavor to shoot a documentary about someone of whom there are virtually no pictures. ... The fragments that he (Rüter) collects aptly testify to a thoughtful gesture that combines literary elegance, metaphor anger and conceptual artistry with varying proportions. "

journalism

In addition to his large portraits and documentaries, Rüter also writes articles for the TV culture magazines Aspects , Metropolis / Arte and ttt .

Filmography

As a director

  • 1989/91 The Time is out of Joint / The time is out of joint , WDR / in-house production, 100 '
  • 1993 Inter City Express / Between Cities Fast - a film about speed and slowness, 1993, 30 'WDR / ZDF / Arte
  • 1997 Curiosity & Risk - a film about the Berlin Hebbel Theater and its European partners, 1997, SFB / Arte, 60 '
  • 1998 After completion - a film about ›The Berlin Investigation‹ by Esther Shalev-Gerz and Jochen Gerz , 3sat, 60 '
  • 1999 L'Homme de Passage - the director Klaus Michael Grüber, WDR / Arte, 75 '
  • 2000 I'm not an actor - a film about the actor Klaus Kinski , WDR / Arte, 45 '
  • 2000 Playing for Life - a film about the actor Ulrich Wildgruber , NDR / 3sat, 50 '
  • 2001 Curt Bois - character comedian, co-author Wolfgang Deichsel, 3sat / RBB , 45 '
  • 2002 There is no Paradise - a film about the singer Ute Lemper , WDR / Arte, 60 '
  • 2004 Simple and Pride - a film about the actress Angela Winkler, WDR / Arte / 3sat, 85 '
  • 2005 Thomas Brasch - a film about the poet, writer and filmmaker, 3sat, 30 '
  • 2006 Raw Material - The Writer Jörg Fauser - with Franz Dobler, 3sat, 45 '
  • 2008 Now I am alone - a film about the actor Ulrich Mühe, 3sat / Arte, 60 '
  • 2009 I don't want to know who I am - a film about the playwright Heiner Müller, ZDFtheaterkanal / 3sat / Arte, 60 ', co-author Thomas Irmer
  • 2011 BRASCH - Desiring and Fearing - a film about the writer, poet and filmmaker Thomas Brasch, cinema coproduction with TAG / TRAUM, 3sat, Filmstiftung NRW, Medienboard Berlin, BKM, premiere in the Panorama section of the Berlinale 2011 92 '
  • 2016 Crime and the Third Reich - a documentary about the writers Philip Kerr, Volker Kutscher & Dominique Manotti, Arte / ZDF, 53 '
  • 2018 Hans Blumenberg - The Invisible Philosopher - a cinema co-production by Tag / Traum, Christoph Rüter Filmproduktion, Kinescope Film, BKM, Filmstiftung NRW, Filmförderung Hamburg-Schleswig-Holstein, premiere at the “60. Nordic Film Days Lübeck "November 2018, 102 '

As a producer

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wenke Börnsen: "We laughed away the GDR leadership. In: tagesschau.de . November 4, 2009, accessed on July 14, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Eckhard Roelcke “Who is the Spirit?” In Die Zeit from August 16, 1991
  3. ^ Gerhard Stadelmeier in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 18, 1999
  4. ↑ Benjamin Henrichs in Süddeutsche Zeitung from 5./6. June 2004
  5. ↑ TV preview. In: Spiegel Online . July 17, 2006, accessed July 14, 2020 .
  6. ↑ fol / ddp / dpa: Tom Cruise mourns Ulrich Mühe. In: Focus . September 2, 2007, accessed July 14, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Renate Stinn in Evangelischer Pressedienst in issue 2/2009
  8. ↑ | Archive / film data sheet Berlinale 2011 , accessed on July 14, 2020.
  9. ↑ Kerstin Decker in Der Tagesspiegel from November 2, 2011
  10. ↑ Program information Arte , accessed on July 14, 2020.
  11. ↑ the questions asked by Ana Honnacker: Stopping the journey into the unknown - A conversation with Christoph Rüter. In: Think further - Journal for Philosophy, No. 1 / 2020. Accessed July 30, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Gregor Dotzauer: The man who disappeared behind his work. In: Der Tagesspiegel . November 22, 2018, accessed July 14, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Rüter, Christoph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German documentary filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Gelsenkirchen