Jonathan Briel

Jonathan Briel

Jonatan Karl Dieter Briel (born June 9, 1942 in Bodenwerder , † December 26, 1988 in Berlin ) was a German director , screenwriter and actor .

Life

Jonatan Briel was born in Bodenwerder on the Weser in 1942 and grew up in Holzminden . There he completed an administration apprenticeship from 1959 to 1962. In 1962 he founded the "Jugendfilmstudio Holzminden" and was its director until 1964. From 1965 he was a civil servant in the state administration on Fehrbelliner Platz. He became Peter Lilienthal's assistant . In 1966 Jonatan Briel moved to the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB). His first film was called the 300th birthday. He shot this film in Wolfgang Staudte's course. The content of this film reflects KD Briel's experience of bureaucracy. The location was his old workplace at Fehrbelliner-Platz in West Berlin. The actors in the film were laypeople. The cameraman was Gerry Schum from the DFFB and the assistant director of all of his films at the academy was Norbert Maas, a theater student. KDBriel made the short films: about the puppet theater based on a story by Hv Kleist and "Under supervision", a cinematic scene adaptation of the play by Jean Genet with the acting students Ulrich Gressieker and Heinrich Gieskes. Since 1970 he has been an independent filmmaker at Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) and from 1982 taught at the University of the Arts in Berlin.

Jonatan Briel's adopted home was Berlin from 1965, where he lived and worked until his death. As an intensive preparation for the creation of scripts and films, he traveled to all major European cities at a very young age, especially the places that shaped the lives of his protagonists. Artistic interactions and study purposes also took him to America for a long time - he lived and worked there in New York, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston.

Press reviews

“... Jonatan Briel proves himself to be a specialist in the difficult genre of biographical film with his three film portraits of famous personalities in German literature. In 1969 he made his Heinrich von Kleist film "Like two happy airshipmen; in 1971 he shot" Jonatan Briels Lenz ", a biography of Goethe's childhood friend, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz; in 1975 he completed" Glutmensch ", a portrait of the poet and playwright Christian Friedrich Hebbel . A Briel film biography is always at the same time a personal encounter with the protagonist; Briel's film style tries to capture and reproduce the lifestyle of the respective epoch. Jonatan Briel worked on a small budget; the location was mostly West Berlin. The unusual character of his films creates one A challenge to his critics. The screenwriter and director Briel grapples intensively with a topic until he has fully internalized the content and structure of a project. In 1976 and 1982 the Arsenal cinema in Berlin showed retrospectives of the Jonatan Briel films Experience for the lover of the new German film ... "

- KINO No. 7 / summer 1982

"... there is much conviction about this difficult film and contributing to the conviction, the leading prayer has even a striking resemblance to the poet playwright. Both technically and artistically an utterly unconventional film that requires a receptive viewer ... "

- VARIETY / New York October 29, 1969

"... the literary analysis of Heinrich von Kleist as it is created by KD Briel shows that it is well worth having faith in the German film ..."

- REVUE DU CINEMA INTERNATIONAL No. 9 / Paris 1970

“At the Locarno Festival Briel was highly successful with his film about Heinrich von Kleist and was given much attention abroad, where his film was widely discussed and reviewed in the USA, France and Italy. His film about Berlin deserves even more attention. It was shown on the German Television at the night studio series "Camera Films". It is - at last - a film which demonstrates the courage to compose impressions of Berlin, completely detached from any 'modern' trend. It is necessary to see the color version because color is here one of the main composition factors. Past and future times are shown in warm and normal shades, the present is however painted in manipulated and detachment-provoking colors. The Gedächtniskirche (Empirial Memorial Church) appears in an empty gray-blue, the Reichstag (Parliament) - shot from a railway territory - freezes in a pale midnight-blue, empty railway sidings in the front - itself beoming an empty siding. The Russian Church appears in all shades of blue, radiating in turquoise and rose (pink). This is the scenario of the colors. Much more important is he whole film as a> picture-puzzle <, showing a threefold face of Berlin: the old imperial and fascist Berlin, the old "Reichshauptstadt", then the newly constructed Berlin, built into cool sand, around the Breitscheidplatz, the New Memorial Church. And finally Berlin as it is talked about by the old (lady) Berlin Lady Adelheide Pickert - the Berlin to be - the Berlin which is becoming European Center without dead weights from the past, the geographical center of a free Europe. Here - as Briel puts it - the future of the progressive young people may be created. In facht the portrait of the 90-years-old former great singer Adelheide Pickert (famous as Mahler-interprete around 1910) is not manipulated into this film- her person corresponds exactly to the outward emptiness. The things she says are very far out, strangely brilliant - creating a counterpoint to the filmed atomosphere of the 1970 Berlin summer. With a first-class photography, a brilliant and imaginative scenario, far away from any clichee, supported by the long-drawn, mind-penetrating and beautifully composed music, making visible the essence, this film shows that images can be regarded as they are - that there is nothing mysterious about them. There is no clichee, there is poetry, there is tension created by colors and cuts. "

- de Saint-André / EVANGELIC FILM OBSERVER / 1970

Filmography

Shooting of Glutmensch: Jonatan Briel, Brigitte Reimers, Werner Brunn

Shooting of Glutmensch: Jonatan Briel behind the camera

• 1969 Like two happy airshipmen , 85 min; Script and direction: Jonatan Briel; DFFB production; ran as a German contribution to the Locarno Film Festival in 1970

Content: The last three days in Kleist's life

• 1970 Weighed and found too heavy ; TV documentary, 45 min .; SFB production
• 1970 Berlin Berlin Berlin , 45 min., Experimental film ; Script, direction and production: Jonatan Briel
• 1971 Jonatan Briels Lenz - A German Physiognomy , 120 min .; Script and direction: Jonatan Briel; ZDF production

Content: Tales from the life of a friend of the young Goethe (Lenz) as a visible parallel to the film author's life

• 1971 Tago Mago , 120 min .; Experimental film, direction and performance: Jonatan Briel; ZDF production

• Shooting without a specific script in Mainz, Reims, Paris, Ibiza and Formentera

Contents: Paris 1914, on the murder of the socialist leader Jean Jaurès

• 1973 A strange case of love , 45 min .; Screenplay, direction, production: Jonatan Briel; SFB production

Contents: Reference to Charles Baudelaire's “Les fleurs du Mal”

• 1973–75 Glutmensch , 90 min .; Script and direction: Jonatan Briel; SFB and “Literary Berlin Colloquium” - production

Content: Werner Brunn plays Friedrich Hebbel , who on his 50th birthday, sickly tied to bed, remembers his childhood in feverish dreams

• 1979 The Secret ; Director: Jonatan Briel
• 1981–82 subservient to Scardanelli ; Director: Jonatan Briel

Content: Hölderlin's drama - a poetic genius between madness and retreat

• 1983–84 Dorian Gray in the mirror of the tabloid press ; Jonatan Briel as the actor
• 1985 Screenplay for the movie The Double Stranger

Content: A film about the stages of inner homelessness

• until 1988 Hunkepiel (in preparation)

Jonatan Briel's films can be viewed at the former SFB.

Radio plays

• The stars that smile at their hut (text and direction; SFB 1981)
• The attempt to sing a song by Karl Günter Hufnagel (SFB 1982)
• The house of wishes
• Elli, SO 36 (SFB 1984)
• Katja (SFB 1985)
• As long as you love me, I can't get worse by Susette Gontard (SFB 1985)
• Kleist Project Berlin 1987

Web links

• Jonatan Briel in theInternet Movie Database(English)