Joachim Kunert

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Hans-Joachim Kunert (born September 24, 1929 in Berlin ) is a German film and television director and screenwriter.

Life

After finishing school in 1947, Kunert was employed as an assistant director at the DEFA studio for feature films . There he assisted Kurt Maetzig ( Ehe im Schatten , 1947) and Wolfgang Schleif ( Glück auf!, 1948; Grube Morgenrot , 1948; ... and if it were only one ... , 1949; The Blue Swords , 1949), later with Hans Müller ( Mayor Anna , 1950), Arthur Pohl ( The boys from Kranichsee , 1950), Erich Freund ( irregular train traffic , 1951), Franz Barrenstein (His big victory , 1952) and Eduard Kubat ( jacket like pants , 1953). At the same time, he wasassistant director to Wolfgang Langhoff ( Egmont , Don Carlos ) and Rudolf Noelte ( Pygmalion )at the Deutsches Theater and then staged at various theaters himself.

In 1954 Kunert became a director at DEFA-Studio for newsreels and documentaries . There he made the 30-minute documentary A Stream Flows through Germany with impressions of the Elbe from Schmilka to Hamburg , a 20-minute film about the Dresden Philharmonic and finally a documentary about the life of the writer Martin Andersen Nexø , which (like many documentaries by the DEFA) was subject to a performance ban in the FRG.

Since 1956 Kunert was employed as a director at the DEFA studio for feature films . His first feature film, Special Features: None (1955), a post-war drama about a woman (played by Erika Müller-Fürstenau ) who has to look after her children without a husband and without a job, was based on a script by Berta Waterstradt , with which he was also involved in 1959 the comedy Marriage case Lorenz worked together. There was also a longer artistic collaboration with the writer Jens Gerlach , with whom he wrote the screenplay for the Andersen Nexø documentary. The two planned a feature film cycle based on the works of Andersen Nexøs, which should include the works Pelle the Conqueror , Morten the Red and Jeanette . However, only the Andersen Nexø film adaptation, Der Lotterieschwede, with Erwin Geschonneck in the title role, was intended as a finger exercise . This was followed by other contemporary films for DEFA and, in 1961, with The Last Night (based on a script by Hermann Rodigast ), Kunert's first work for television.

Film advertising for irregular train traffic on the ruins of the Pschorrhaus on Potsdamer Platz , 1951
Premiere of Werner Holt at Kino Kosmos

In 1964 Kunert made his most popular film and at the same time (with four million cinema viewers) one of the most successful DEFA films ever: The Adventures of Werner Holt, based on the first part of the bestselling novel by Dieter Noll . The film adaptation impressed with the main actors Klaus-Peter Thiele and Manfred Karge and the camera work by Rolf Sohre . Werner Holt's adventures received the Grand Prize of the Soviet Peace Committee at the IV Moscow International Film Festival in 1965 ; the creative collective (Kunert, Sohre and screenwriter Claus Küchenmeister ) also received the National Prize, 2nd class , in 1965 .

Kunert's last films at DEFA were two Anna Seghers film adaptations, The Dead Remain Young (1969) and The Duel (1970). A film project about the Scholl siblings planned together with the author Franz Fühmann had failed, and Kunert switched to television in 1971 . There he made two more films based on stories by Anna Seghers, The Great Journey of Agathe Schweigert (1972) with Helga Göring in the title role and Das Schilfrohr (1974). In 1975 the documentary film Profile of an Unwanted Person was made based on reports by Günter Wallraff ; Gerhard Bengsch provided the script .

Kunert's directorial work included two episodes of the television series Famous Doctors at Charité, based on scripts by Rolf Gumlich : Krisis (about Robert Koch ) and The Dark Years (about Ferdinand Sauerbruch and Karl Bonhoeffer ). The directing collective of the series, which included Kunert, Ursula Bonhoff , Manfred Mosblech and Wolf-Dieter Panse , received the Heinrich Greif Prize, 2nd class , in 1983 .

His written estate is in the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Filmography

Documentaries:

  • 1954: A river flows through Germany (also script)
  • 1955: The Dresden Philharmonic (also screenplay)
  • 1960: Martin Andersen Nexö (also screenplay with Jens Gerlach )

Feature films:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Kunert Archive inventory overview on the website of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
personal data
SURNAME Kunert, Joachim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kunert, Hans-Joachim (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film and television director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin