Wolfgang Petersen

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Wolfgang Petersen (2006)

Wolfgang Petersen (born March 14, 1941 in Emden ) is a German film director , screenwriter and film producer .

Life

Childhood, youth and first work in directing

Petersen, the son of a naval officer, was born in 1941 in a residential building in the Emden administrative district, but grew up in Mecklenburg during the Second World War . After that, his parents first moved back to Petersen's birthplace Emden , where they lived in a barracks settlement in the Port Arthur / Transvaal district near the harbor . In 1950 Petersen then moved to Hamburg-Bramfeld . He made his first films with an 8 mm camera during his school days at the Johanneum School of Academics .

Petersen performed his first directorial work at the Junge Theater in Hamburg , where he directed various children's productions. He also worked as an assistant director and actor , attended drama school and began studying theater studies in Berlin and Hamburg in 1965 .

In 1966 he switched to the German Film and Television Academy and made a few short films as student theses (including Der Eine - Der Andere und Ich nicht ) and as a thesis the film I will kill you, Wolf (1969). In addition, he staged several plays in Hamburg.

Career in Germany

From left to right: Stanley O'Toole , Dennis Quaid , Petersen (1984)

From 1971 Petersen worked for television and shot a. a. six Tatort episodes for NDR , a television film for WDR ( Van der Valk and the Rich ) and other television productions. The Tatort episode leaving certificate with Nastassja Kinski and Christian Quadflieg after scene: red - red - dead still the second most successful crime scene at all.

Petersen was able to make his first feature film in 1973/74: One of us two . When casting, he relied on a relatively solid base of employees, including the cameraman Charly Steinberger , the actor Jürgen Prochnow and the composer Klaus Doldinger . The film The Consequence sparked a scandal in 1977 when the BR switched itself off from broadcasting the first broadcast on television because the broadcaster believed the film's theme, homosexuality , was unsuitable for its audience. When the film officially opened in theaters shortly afterwards, however, it could also be seen in Bavaria.

In 1980 the production company Bavaria Film Petersen transferred the direction of the large-scale production Das Boot , which became a box-office hit especially in the USA and became the most successful foreign language film to date. In Germany, the film was initially moderately successful with 2.3 million viewers, but also became one of the best-known and most successful German films through re-performances and television broadcasts.

After this first great success, Petersen shot the most expensive German post-war production to date with a budget of more than 50 million DM (around 25.6 million euros): The Neverending Story .

Hollywood career

The science fiction film Enemy Mine - Geliebter Feind was made in 1984 as a German-American co-production. It was shot almost entirely in the Bavaria Studios in Munich . In 1986 Petersen moved to Los Angeles. Together with producer Gail Katz, he internationalized his production company Radiant Film as Radiant Productions . Katz acted as the company's CEO. Petersen shot other films in Hollywood for the international market and designed blockbusters such as Death in the Mirror , In the Line of Fire - The Second Chance , Outbreak - Silent Killer , Air Force One , The Tempest , Poseidon and Troy . Six films, for which Wolfgang Petersen was responsible, achieved box office profits (adjusted for inflation) of over 100 million dollars each, with Das Boot even seven. All of his films have made 15 Academy Award nominations so far, including six nominations for Das Boot alone (direction, script adaptation, camera, editing, sound and sound editing).

Wolfgang Petersen (2006)

Personal

Petersen was married to Ursula Sieg from 1970 to 1978 . In 1978 he married Maria Borgel's assistant director, who then assumed a double name: Maria Borgel-Petersen.

Others

Petersen was one of the founding members of the German Film Academy in 2003 .

Filmography

Director and assistant director

producer

Awards

Films in the top 250 of the IMDb
space Movie
79 The boat

literature

  • Tim Heptner (Ed.) Deutsches Filminstitut / German Filmmuseum: Das Boot. Looking for the U96 crew. Henschel Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-89487-550-X .
  • Helmut Sorge: Off to America! - Tell emigrants. Collection Rolf Heyne, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-89910-438-7 .
  • Hans-Michael Bock (Ed.): CineGraph - Lexicon for German-language film. (Loose-leaf collection), B1-B6, F1-F22, E1-E22. edition text + kritik, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-86916-158-7 .

Web links

Wikiquote: Wolfgang Petersen  - Quotes
Commons : Wolfgang Petersen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Red - red - dead": The record "crime scene" at SWR
  2. ↑ Christine Haase: When Heimat Meets Hollywood: German Filmmakers and America, 1985-2005. Studies in German Literature, 2007, ISBN 978-1571132796 , page 83 .
  3. ↑ The Top 250 of the IMDb (as of April 25, 2020)
  4. ↑ Focus online from November 29, 2012, Film: Honorary Director's Prize for Wolfgang Petersen , accessed on November 30, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Petersen, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film director and film producer
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Emden