Dominik Wessely

Dominik Wessely (* 1966 in Munich ) is a German film director , documentary filmmaker and screenwriter .

Life

Dominik Wessely, who after graduating from high school and the civil service in 1988, working as a camera assistant , props manager and manager in television dramas , commercials and documentaries began, studied from 1989 to 1991 modern history, art history and philosophy in Munich. From 1991 to 1996 he studied directing / documentary film at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy ; During this time he also wrote scripts and was a cameraman for short films , he was also assistant director for the feature films Prinzenbad (1993) and Der Menschenfresser (1994). Since completing his studies in 1996, Wessely has been working as a freelance screenwriter and film director. In 1999 he co-founded Liliom Film GmbH in Munich, but later left as a partner. Dominik Wessely lives in Schöneiche near Berlin .

From 2008 to 2013 Dominik Wessely was professor for documentary film directing at the International Film School Cologne (ifs).

Works

His debut, the documentary Die Blume der Hausfrau (1998) about the everyday life of a group of vacuum cleaner representatives, merged the observational method of the documentary with elements of genre cinema (e.g. spaghetti westerns ) and was critically and audiences (around 70,000 Cinema viewers) in Germany success. In the following years Dominik Wessely worked as a documentary filmmaker for television, a. a. on the Grimme Prize- winning documentary series Broadway Bruchsal (2001) about everyday work at a German provincial theater and on the Living History series Wind Force 8 - The Emigrant Ship (2005). His next film Die Unzerbrechlichen (2006) was awarded the Goethe Institute's Documentary Film Prize at the 2006 Duisburg Film Week. In 2008, the two-hour documentary film Gegenenschuss followed - the departure of the filmmakers via the authors' film publishing house . Wessely made this film together with Laurens Straub , who died before the film was finished. In 2009 he was one of around 70 directors for the monumental TV documentary 24h Berlin - A Day in a Lifetime .

In 2016, Wessely presented his first feature film with the children's adventure film Nelly's Adventure . The film was shown at 50 film festivals in 30 countries around the world and has won numerous national and international awards, including two best film awards.

On February 11, 2019, Wessely's documentary It Could Have Been Worse - Mario Adorf premiered at the 69th Berlinale.

style

Characteristic of Wessely's documentary work is a great thematic variety and a broad spectrum of formal approaches. His topics range from observing the world of work ( The Housewife's Flower , Broadway Bruchsal , Die Unzerbrechlichen ) to architecture and urban planning ( God's plan and human hand ) to film and music history ( reverse shot - the dawn of the filmmaker , Carmina Burana ).

Wessely used different formal means from film to film: his debut The Flower of the Housewife is still recognizable in the tradition of American "direct cinema", namely the influence of the films by Albert and David Maysles ( Salesmen ) detect. In later works, Wessely often breaks away from the strictly documentary-observing method and instead uses fictional narrative models ( Hallowed Bones , Carmina Burana ).

Many of Wessely's documentaries have a basic dramatic pattern: his protagonists are often subjected to an existential test in the course of events. In The Housewife's Flower, vacuum cleaner salesman Angelo Ditta gets into a crisis that finally leads him to the realization that he is working in the wrong job. In Die Unzerbrechlichen , Wessely tells of the dramatic struggle of a handful of unemployed glassmakers from the Bavarian Forest to revive their centuries-old insolvent glassworks. God's plan and human hand portrays the architect and city planner Klaus Humpert and tells of his fight against his critics. The way in which Wessely stages his protagonist and his research work on the development of medieval cities follows the pattern of a classic David versus Goliath story. Gegenenschuss - Aufbruch der Filmmaker (Aufbruch der Filmmaker) is primarily an interview and archive film in the tradition of Eberhard Fechner ( Die Comedian Harmonists ), whereby Wessely interprets the coming together and breaking up of the young German filmmakers in the authors' film publishing house as a rise-and-fall story .

Filmography (selection)

• 1994: Omen - 15 hours of Tekkno (documentary), camera
• 1995: Anti-Sisyphus - The painter Roman Opalka (documentary), director
• 1998: The Housewife's Flower (documentary), screenplay / director
• 1999: Heaven and Earth (TV game series, 2 episodes), director
• 2001: Broadway Bruchsal - Acting Dreams in the Province (TV documentary series), screenplay / director
• 2003: German class (TV game series, 5 episodes), screenplay, director
• 2004: God's Plan and Human Hand (documentary), screenplay / director
• 2005: Patient Country Doctor (documentary), screenplay / director
• 2005: Wind force 8 - The Emigration Ship 1855 (TV documentary series), director
• 2006: Die Unzerbrechlichen (documentary film), screenplay / director
• 2008: Hallowed Bones (documentary), director
• 2008: Gegenenschuss - Awakening of the Filmmakers (documentary), screenplay / director
• 2009: 24h Berlin (documentary), director (episode)
• 2010: Matussek meets (culture magazine), director (3 episodes)
• 2011: Carmina Burana - Carl Orff (documentary), screenplay / director
• 2012: Georg Kreisler doesn't exist at all (documentation), screenplay / director
• 2013: Qin - The immortal emperor and his terracotta warriors (documentary), screenplay / director
• 2014: 24h Jerusalem (documentary), director (episode)
• 2016: Nelly's Adventure (feature film), director
• 2017: 24h Bavaria - One Day at Home (documentary), director (episode crematorium)
• 2017: Charlotte Knobloch - A Life in Germany
• 2017: laugh to survive. Ephraim Kishon (documentary), screenplay / director
• 2019: It could have been worse - Mario Adorf (documentary), screenplay, director

Awards

• 1997: Silver Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival for Anti-Sisyphus - The painter Roman Opalka
• 2002: Adolf Grimme Prize : Special Prize from the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Culture for Broadway Bruchsal - Acting dreams in the province
• 2006: Prize of the Goethe Institute at the 30th Duisburg Film Week for Die Unzerbrechlichen
• 2006: Berndt Media Prize at the 17th Lünen Kinofest for Die Unzerbrechlichen
• 2016: Gryphon Award (Best Film) in the ELEMENTS + 10 competition series at the 46th Giffoni Film Festival for Nelly's Adventure
• 2016: KIJUKO-Filmpreis 2016 (Best Film) at the Children's Film Festival Bremen for Nelly's Adventure
• 2018: Guro Kid's International Film Festival Seoul 2018: Cultural Exchange Prize For A Feature Film for Nelly's Adventure

Publications

• Christoph Glaser, Dominik Wessely: Doing business instead of failing: The unusual rescue of a traditional company . Econ Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-43-020005-9 .
• Dominik Wessely: The documentary and the “sweetener offensive” . In: Peter Zimmermann, Kay Hoffmann (eds.): Documentary film in transition. Cinema - television - new media . UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Konstanz 2006, ISBN 3-89-669681-5 , pp. 281-286.
• Dominik Wessely: On the happiness of letting go . In: Béatrice Ottersbach, Thomas Schadt (eds.) Film teaching - an undogmatic guide for students . Bertz + Fischer-Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86505-220-9 , pp. 123-130.
• Dominik Wessely: "Notes on documentary film training in the age of digitality". In: Edmund Ballhaus (Ed.) "Documentary. Schools - Projects - Concepts". Reimer-Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-496-02864-2 , pp. 13-27.
• Dominik Wessely: "Playing with history. Historical narration in documentary films and games". In: Gundolf S. Freyermuth , Lisa Gotto , Fabian Wallenfels. (Ed.) "Serious Games, Exergames, Exerlearning - On the Transmedialization and Gamification of Knowledge Transfer". Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld 2013, ISBN 978-3-8376-2166-2 , pp. 123-136

Publications about Dominik Wessely

• Judith threshold brook: history light to participate? - The TV format Living History using the example of the series "Wind speed 8 - The emigrant ship" Master's thesis, Philosophical Faculty of the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster, Münster (Westphalia) 2007.
• Sebastian Heinrich, Jan Keck, Claudia Übelhör: DOCUMENTARY - One world, many perspectives DVD, 2009
• Christina Bruns: Contemporary German Documentary Cinema (1999 - 2007): the Rural Represented, the Regional Defamiliarized and Heimat Revived PhD Thesis, The University of Edinburgh 2010
• Dr. Maya Götz: Reception study for the film NELLYS ABENTEUER , International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television 2017

Web links

• Information about Dominik Wessely on the website of the Federal Initiative for Integration and Television
• Information about Dominik Wessely on filmportal.de
• Dominik Wessely in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ bundesinitiative.org: Dominik Wessely (page accessed on June 29, 2008)
2. ↑ ^{a b} German Films: Film Info: Nelly's Adventure. Retrieved February 9, 2018 . 
3. ↑ It could have been worse - Mario Adorf | It Could Have Been Worse - Mario Adorf. In: Berlinale.de. Retrieved April 13, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Home. In: kijuko.city46.de. Retrieved December 9, 2016 . 
5. ^ Statement by Dr. Maya Götz and Joachim von Gottberg on "Nelly's Adventure" - INDI FILM production . In: INDI FILM production . December 1, 2017 ( indifilm.de [accessed February 23, 2018]). Statement from Dr. Maya Götz and Joachim von Gottberg on "Nelly's Adventure" - INDI FILM production ( Memento from January 26, 2018 in the Internet Archive )