TOM GRAMENZ SWEN GIPPA A FILM BY STÉPHANE ... - prora
TOM GRAMENZ SWEN GIPPA A FILM BY STÉPHANE ... - prora
TOM GRAMENZ SWEN GIPPA A FILM BY STÉPHANE ... - prora
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Tom Gramenz Swen Gippa A film by STéphane rieThauSer<br />
LamBDa proD presents • in coproduction with rTS – SwiSS raDio TeLeviSion with the support of SwiSS FeDeraL oFFice<br />
oF cuLTure, DeparTmenT oF home aFFairS • ciTY oF Geneva, DeparTmenT oF cuLTure anD SporTS<br />
reGio FiLmS FunD • miGroS cuLTure percenTaGe • DiaLoGai, Geneva<br />
Tom Gramenz • Swen Gippa • “<strong>prora</strong>” • a film by STéphane rieThauSer associate producer iSaBeLLe GaTTiker<br />
director of photography marcuS winTerBauer sound carLoS iBañez Díaz first assistant director marie-caTherine TheiLer<br />
editing BarBara ToennieShen, BFS, véronique roTeLLi camera assistant nicoLaS DeLaroche<br />
costumes & props inGriD Buhrmann make-up & special effects Tanja maria koLLer location manager peTra wiLD<br />
sound design carLoS iBañez Díaz music DaviD perrenouD, BenoîT maYer sound mix marTin STricker<br />
written, directed and produced by STéphane rieThauSer<br />
distribution eDiTion SaLzGeBer, BerLin © 2012 LamBDa proD – rTS www.<strong>prora</strong>-Themovie.com
FESTIVALS / AWARDS / PRESS<br />
"Riethauser's provocation (there will be blood) connects the dots between the Weimer era and<br />
today's party-down Euro youth. Director of photography Marcus Winterbauer lenses this intimate<br />
epic with aerial shots interspersed with languorous semi-nudity."<br />
The Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco<br />
Palm Springs International Short Fest<br />
Hollyshorts Film Festival Los Angeles<br />
Outfest Los Angeles <br />
CFC Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival <br />
Frameline San Francisco <br />
New York City Short Film Festival <br />
San Francisco Intl Shorts<br />
NewFest, New York City<br />
QFest Philadelphia<br />
Toronto Inside Out <br />
New York City International Film Festival<br />
North Carolina GLFF Durham <br />
Montreal Image+Nation <br />
Boston LGBT<br />
Seattle Queer Film Festival<br />
QFest Houston <br />
Southwest GLFF Albuquerque<br />
ImageOut Rochester NY <br />
Eau Queer Festival Wisconsin <br />
Milwaukee LGBT Film Festival <br />
QFest Asheville, NC<br />
Santa Barbara Outrageous Festival<br />
London BFI Lesbian and Gay Film Festival <br />
Portobello Film Festival, London<br />
Gaze Dublin <br />
Iris Prize Festival Cardiff, Wales<br />
ELEGEBETE Fest Malaga, Spain<br />
Torino GLBT Festival<br />
Mix Milano <br />
Overlook Film Festival Finale Ligure, Italy <br />
Outview Athens Gay and Lesbian Film Festival <br />
Tel-Aviv LGBT Film Festival<br />
International Izmir Short Film Festival <br />
more than 70 official festival selections worldwide<br />
www.<strong>prora</strong>-themovie.com<br />
Puerto Rico Queer Film Fest<br />
Mix Brasil, Sao Paulo, Rio, Brasilia<br />
Hong Kong InDpanda Film Festival<br />
Q! Film Festival Djakarta, Indonesia<br />
Calcutta GLBT Film Festival, India<br />
Festival Européen du Film Court de Brest <br />
Festival Silhouette Paris<br />
Festival du Film Court Lille <br />
Festival Chéries-Chéris Paris<br />
Festival du Cinéma Européen en Essonne<br />
Festival C’est Trop Court Nice<br />
Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur<br />
Pink Apple International Festival Zürich<br />
Queersicht, Lesbisch Schwules Filmfestival Bern<br />
Nuit du Court Métrage Lausanne<br />
Everybody’s Perfect Geneva <br />
Verzaubert Liebe Filme Festival, Germany<br />
Berlin Xposed Queer International Film Festival <br />
Karlsruhe Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage<br />
Hannover Perlen Festival<br />
Hamburg International Queer Film Festival<br />
GSC Filmfest im Allgäu <br />
Rostock Queer Fest<br />
Weiterstadt Queer Woche<br />
Flensburger Kurzfilmtage<br />
Budapest Shorts Busho <br />
Ostrava Kamera Oko Festival<br />
Mezipatra Film Festival Prag<br />
Merlinka Intl Queer Festival Belgrade<br />
Ljubljana LGBT <br />
Vilnius Intl Short Fest <br />
Oslo GLBT <br />
Mix Copenhagen
PITCH<br />
Prora, on the Baltic Sea. Mysterious, endless. In this deserted former Nazi holiday camp<br />
and communist military complex, teenagers Jan and Matthieu embark on an adventure that<br />
confronts their identities and puts their friendship at risk.<br />
www.<strong>prora</strong>-themovie.com
SYNOPSIS<br />
Prora, Rügen Island, Baltic Sea. A deserted Nazi holiday camp and communist military<br />
complex - one of Germany's largest and most bizarre structures. Jan, 17, a rather timid<br />
German teenager, spends his summer holidays with his friend Matthieu, 18, a French selfproclaimed<br />
macho womanizer. After a frustrating night in the local club, the two boys decide<br />
to hang out on the beach at sunrise. What starts as an innocent game soon develops into<br />
an ambiguous confrontation, when Matthieu takes his friend along into the abandoned<br />
building, and provokes him by making fun of Germany’s past. After a chase through Prora’s<br />
endless hallways, Jan provokes Matthieu in return by suddenly kissing him on the lips. The<br />
two friends unexpectedly embark on an erotic game that puts their friendship at risk.<br />
Overwhelmed by their feelings, they try to escape, but they get lost in Prora’s labyrinthine<br />
series of rooms and walkways. Desperate, tortured, a fight breaks out that leaves Jan alone<br />
and wounded. A few days later, Jan and Matthieu meet again on the beach. Will they<br />
become friends again before they part?<br />
A journey of self-exploration, an odyssey of male adolescence, Prora is a thrilling, tender<br />
story about love and friendship.<br />
www.<strong>prora</strong>-themovie.com
PRORA<br />
At a staggering 4,5 km in length, Prora is a former holiday camp built from 1936 to 1939 by<br />
the Nazis. The structure is located on the Island of Rügen, just north of the German<br />
mainland in the Baltic Sea. Designed by Hitler-appointed architect Clemens Klotz, this<br />
massive outlay of concrete was meant to host 20,000 people for a strictly controlled<br />
vacation. But war interrupted construction in 1939. The „Colossus of Rügen Island“ was<br />
used as a military hospital and a refugee camp, before the Red Army took it over in 1945.<br />
Communist East Germany turned it into a military base. For almost 40 years, Prora served<br />
as a training camp for soldiers and officers. It was abandoned shortly after the Berlin Wall<br />
came down in 1989.<br />
Prora (Latin), πρῷρα (Greek): the prow, the bow of a ship or a vessel.<br />
www.<strong>prora</strong>-themovie.com
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT<br />
I was working on a script about two boys confronting their identities when one day I read a<br />
newspaper article about Prora. I immediately thought it would be the perfect setting to stage<br />
my story. Its endless dimensions allowed unusual cinematic possibilities and its massively<br />
historic and oppressive architecture offered many symbolic perspectives. I also liked the<br />
name “Prora”, which in Latin and Greek means the prow of a ship. It matched my desire to<br />
tell the story of the two friends Jan and Matthieu, one German and the other French.<br />
Despite opposite backgrounds and personalities, Jan and Matthieu gradually feel attracted<br />
to each other until they unexpectedly have sex for the first time. But they have trouble<br />
coming to terms with it: their physical and emotional outburst blows up their cultural<br />
patterns, blurs their relationship and challenges their masculinity. Nonetheless, their<br />
friendship prevails. The experience deepens their understanding of their own identities.<br />
Whether gay or straight, Jan and Matthieu will never forget this adventure, which opens new<br />
horizons and allows them to become men.<br />
I see Prora’s labyrinthine structure as a third lead character in the story. A vestige of the<br />
past, a witness of failed fascist and communist utopias, the complex reveals the tension<br />
between the boys and provides a stark contrast with the sensuous beauty of the adjacent<br />
Baltic Sea. A statement on the perils of normative heterosexism, Prora underscores the<br />
poisonous inflexibility of Jan and Matthieu’s inherited social landscape.<br />
Given the building’s extraordinary suggestive power, I also built in solitary time for both Jan<br />
and Matthieu in and around the structure. Over the course of the film, the monstrosity<br />
renders the boys at once more fragile, more resilient and more human. Only on the beach,<br />
wordless and elemental, are they able to reconcile.<br />
A journey of self-exploration, a tale of male adolescence, a parabolic confrontation between<br />
nature and culture, Prora is a simple, tender story about love and friendship.<br />
Stéphane Riethauser<br />
www.<strong>prora</strong>-themovie.com
STEPHANE RIETHAUSER<br />
Writer, Director, Producer<br />
Stéphane Riethauser was born in 1972 in Geneva, Switzerland. He holds a law degree<br />
from the University of Geneva. Over the years, he has been working as a teacher, gay<br />
activist, photographer, editor, journalist and translator – before becoming a television<br />
director. He is the author of “A visage découvert”, a photography book about coming out<br />
(Ed. Slatkine, 2000), and has created numerous documentaries and reports for Swiss<br />
Radio Television RTS (2003-2008). He also produced and co-directed documentary<br />
feature “Le Temps Suspendu” on painter Marius Borgeaud (Lambda Prod, 2007). Since<br />
2009, Stéphane Riethauser has lived and worked as an independent filmmaker in Berlin.<br />
“Prora” is his first fiction short film.<br />
For full bio and filmography: www.riethauser.com / www.lambda-prod.ch<br />
Contact: stephane@riethauser.com<br />
www.<strong>prora</strong>-themovie.com
<strong>TOM</strong> <strong>GRAMENZ</strong><br />
Tom Gramenz, born 1991 in Wiesbaden, Germany, started his acting career at the age of 15. His first film<br />
is a short film called “Fluke”. Since then, he has been seen in many TV shows for major German broadcasters<br />
such as RTL, ZDF and Nick. Tom has also acted in several theatre projects in Wiesbaden and<br />
Mainz. Recently, he starred in “Beach Boy” (short by Hannes Hirsch, GER, 2010) and in the TV series<br />
“Soko Köln” and “Stolberg”.<br />
<strong>SWEN</strong> <strong>GIPPA</strong><br />
Swen Gippa, born 1988, is a promising new talent from Montreux, Switzerland, currently living in Paris.<br />
Swen graduated in 2009 from the prestigious Cours Florent in Paris before joining Acting International, a<br />
film, theatre and TV school, for an extra year. He has already been seen in theatre in Paris and Lyon and<br />
in two films, “Noirs peupliers” (2009) by Warren Vrecord and “On y danse” (2010) by Franck Llopis and<br />
Virginie Bordes. Swen is also a talented sportsman and plays piano and classical guitar.<br />
www.<strong>prora</strong>-themovie.com
PRODUCTION CREW<br />
Production Lambda Prod – Stéphane Riethauser<br />
Coproduction Swiss Radio Television RTS<br />
With the support of Swiss Federal Office of Culture – Federal Department<br />
of Home Affairs<br />
City of Geneva, Department of Culture and Sports<br />
Regio Films Fund, with the Loterie Romande, the City & the<br />
Canton of Geneva<br />
Migros Culture Percentage<br />
Dialogai, Geneva<br />
Lead Actor (Jan) Tom Gramenz<br />
Lead Actor (Matthieu) Swen Gippa<br />
Writer, Director, Producer Stéphane Riethauser<br />
Associate Producer Isabelle Gattiker<br />
Director of Photography Marcus Winterbauer<br />
Sound Carlos Ibañez Diaz<br />
1st Asst. Director Marie-Catherine Theiler<br />
Camera Assistant Nicolas Delaroche<br />
Costume & Props Ingrid Buhrmann<br />
Make-Up & SFX Tanja Maria Koller<br />
Location Manager Petra Wild<br />
Aerial Photography Holger Fleig & Volker Tittel, BVK<br />
Editing Barbara Toennieshen, BFS<br />
Véronique Rotelli<br />
Music composer David Perrenoud<br />
Benoît Mayer<br />
Sound Design Carlos Ibañez Diaz<br />
Sound Mix Martin Stricker<br />
Distribution GER / CH / AUT Edition Salzgeber, Berlin – ammann@salzgeber.de<br />
Distribution WORLD Lambda Prod – stephane@lambda-prod.ch<br />
www.<strong>prora</strong>-themovie.com
TECHNICAL DATA<br />
Production year 2012<br />
Production country Switzerland<br />
Length 23 min.<br />
Shooting format HD Video 16:9 Color – 1:78<br />
Available screening formats DCP PAL<br />
HDCAM PAL or NTSC<br />
DIGIBETA PAL<br />
BETA SP PAL<br />
DVD region 0, 1, all<br />
MEDIA FILE .MOV<br />
Original language German and French<br />
Subtitles English<br />
(available in French & German also)<br />
www.<strong>prora</strong>-themovie.com
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