Knut Elstermann

Knut Elstermann at the Berlinale 2009

Knut Elstermann (born August 4, 1960 in Berlin ) is a German film critic and presenter .

Life

Elstermann studied from 1982 to 1986 in the journalism section at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig . He then worked in the newsroom of the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland until 1989 and wrote for the GDR cinema magazine Filmspiegel . Then he moderated until at least 1993 at the youth radio DT64 and MDR Sputnik .

In 1992 he began working as a film critic and journalist at the ORB , which he continues to pursue after the merger with the Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) in 2003 at the RBB broadcasting company . At first he moderated mainly on Radio Brandenburg .
When the station went up on Radio Eins in 1997, it received its own format on Saturday: 12 noon - Das Filmmagazin . He is announced as Kino King Knut by his fellow presenters . For many years he has moderated and reflected on the International Film Festival ( Berlinale ) on Radio Eins . Elstermann also works for MDR , RBB television and Arte . In 2005 and 2006 he presented the TV format Cinemaltalk on N24 together with the author, filmmaker and actor Detlev Buck . He also writes reviews as a freelance film journalist (including in the Berliner Zeitung ).

As an author, Elstermann deals with the history of cinema in Russia, Israel and the GDR with contemporary history. In his book Gerdas Schweigen he describes the life of Gerda Schrage, who was deported to Auschwitz by the National Socialists. After several personal conversations in New York, Elstermann succeeded in persuading his grandmother's best friend, after 60 years, to talk about her fate. In this way he succeeded in writing an authentic, sensitive, and harrowing work on the story of a survivor of the Holocaust. Britta Wauer filmed the book under the title Gerdas Schweigen in 2008 as a documentary.

Knut Elstermann appeared on the screen in Andreas Dresen's feature film Halbe Staircase (2002) as a radio host and in the short film Catalyst by Tibor Melegh as a policeman.

Works

• Gerda's silence. The story of a survivor. be.bra verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-89809-072-8 .
• Convent children. German résumés at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Berlin. be.bra verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-8148-0168-1 .
• I used to be a movie kid. DEFA and its youngest actors. Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-360-02114-4 .
• My Winsstrasse. Berlin places. be.bra verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-89809-107-7 .
• Dagmar Manzel: Human child. An autobiography in conversations with Knut Elstermann. Structure, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-351-03649-2 .

Movies

• 2012: Rosa's world

Web links

Commons : Knut Elstermann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Knut Elstermann in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Literature by and about Knut Elstermann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Interview with Knut Elstermann about the film Gerdas Schweigen , in: Press booklet for the film Gerdas Schweigen , p. 11 f. ( Memento from September 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
• Short biography on Radio Eins