Thomas Honickel (filmmaker)

Thomas Honickel (* 1954 in Lahr , Black Forest ) is a German director , journalist and filmmaker .

Life

Thomas Honickel studied New German Literature and Theater Studies in Freiburg and Munich from 1974 to 1981. In 1981 he wrote a master's thesis with Klaus Kanzog on Peter Handke's "Left-Handed Woman": "The Genesis of a Film."

From 1981 to 1985 Honickel completed a second degree at the Munich University of Television and Film (HFF) in the documentary film department. His two practice films (“Mabuse im Gedächtnis” and “Cannes de 7 à 9”) were shown at the Berlin Film Festival and the Grenzlandfilmtage in Selb and were broadcast on Bavarian TV (BR). In his graduation film “The Key to Jules and Jim” Honickel was the first to tell the authentic background of Francois Truffaut's classic film: the ménage à trois of the German writer Franz Hessel and his wife Helen Grund with the French author Henri-Pierre Roché. The examination committee rated the one-hour documentation as “an excellent achievement”. In 1998 and 2002 Honickel received a teaching position from the Documentary Film Department at the HFF.

After completing his studies, Honickel made around thirty documentaries for ARD and ARTE: in particular for the series “Menschen und Straßen” and “Goals” of the Südwestfunk, which is supervised by Ebbo Demant. In 1989 Honickel examined in the film “Dolce Vita” how the Roman paparazzi inspired Federico Fellini to create his classic film of the same name. In 2008 the film was also shown in the exhibition “Pigozzi and the Paparazzi” at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin. Ten years after RW Fassbinder's death, Honickel interviewed Fassbinder's most prominent actresses such as Hanna Schygulla in 1992 for the documentary “Role Play”. Margit Carstensen and Irm Hermann. This film has been licensed for DVD exploitation in England, France and the USA and was shown at the Moscow Film Festival in 2015. After Elias Canetti's death in 1994 Honickel was allowed to film “Visits in Klosbachstrasse” in Canetti's office. For his 100th birthday in 2005, Honickel developed a long documentary for ARTE, which was also shown in several literature houses. In 2003 Honickel was commissioned by the Biberacher Braith-Mali-Museum to make a video about the painter Jakob Bräckle, which can be seen permanently in the museum. In 2007 Honickel shot two documentaries as a one-man team about the writer WG Sebald, which were funded by the German Literature Fund eV and premiered in the Stuttgart Literature House (“The emigrant”, “Sebald.Orte.”). In 2014 Honickel was invited to the international colloquium “Littérature et éthique documentaire” in Cérisy with these films. In 2008 Honickel shot “Anselm Kiefer's books” for ARTE, and in the same year Kiefer received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. 2010 Honickel delivers for the exhibition “Herta Müller. The cold jewelry of life ”, which runs in the literature houses in Munich and Berlin, a video about the action group Banat. In 2012 Honickel and Reiner Holzemer presented the documentation “Everything comes out of black and gets lost in white” at ARTE's “Black and White” theme day. ”

Parallel to his studies, Honickel worked as a film journalist and provided Film + Ton Magazin, epd Film and TIP-Magazin with around two hundred articles: interviews with directors, cameramen and actors, festival reports and film reviews. Honickel was featured several times in the annual film of the Hanser Verlag and was involved in the "100 films" series of the STERN TV magazine. He has written for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Since 2000 Honickel worked as a correspondent for the Hamburg magazine Photonews (Photonews.de). Honickel was represented in various book publications with essays on the photographers Ed van der Elsken, Robert Frank and Lothar Günther Buchheim as well as photography of the GDR and LEICA photography of the 1950s. Honickel has been working on a biography of Baladine Klossowska, the mother of the painter Balthus and Rainer Maria Rilke's last lover, since 2014.

Thomas Honickel lives in Munich.

Filmography

• 1986 The Key to 'Jules and Jim' (BR)
• 1987 Boulevard of Dreams (SWF, People and Streets)
• 1988 passages. Walter Benjamin in Paris (SWF, People and Streets)
• 1988 Chartier. The general and his army (ARD / BR)
• 1989 Vanishing point Zurich (ARD / SWF, destinations)
• 1989 Dolce Vita (ARD / SWF, The Documentary)
• 1990 Worlds drawn. Comics from France (WDR / BR)
• 1991 Krakow Main Market (SWF, People and Streets)
• 1992 Rue Georges Simenon (SWF, People and Streets)
• 1992 Campo de 'Fiori (SWF, People and Streets)
• 1992 Role Playing: Women via RW Fassbinder (SWF)
• 1993 The Celine Case (SWF)
• 1994 Shaftesbury Avenue. Street of Theaters (SWF, People and Streets)
• 1995 Gardens of Earthly Delights. André Heller and Gabriele d'Annunzio in Gardone (WDR, discoveries)
• 1995 Elias Canetti in Zurich. Visits to Klosbachstrasse (SWF)
• 1998 "Hello, dear guests!" The Schelling Salon (BR)
• 1999 The Elmau. A family and castle history (BR / NDR)
• 2002 My Prague. Josef Sudek - the poet with the camera (BR)
• 2004 Elias Canetti. The ear witness (ARTE / SWR)
• 2007 WG Sebald. The emigrant (BR)
• 2009 Anselm Kiefer's books (ARTE / SWR)

Web links

• Thomas Honickel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Thomas Honickel at filmportal.de