Titel Kino 3/2002 - german films

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Producers’ Portrait Egoli Tossell Film English-born Judy Tossell entered the film industry in 1990 and worked for five years at Ziegler Film on international co-productions before leaving in 1995 to freelance on the developing of projects with first-time filmmakers. In 1996, she founded Tossell Pictures to produce the short Chainsmoker (1997) by Maria von Heland and placed the company’s emphasis on young filmmakers, shorts (Britta Krause’s Five Minutes/Fuenf Minuten, 1998) and first features (such as Achim von Borries’ England!, 2000). Jens Meurer started working as a director of documentaries in the US and former Soviet Union – with such films as Harlem – A Dream Deferred (1989) and Beyond the Kremlin Walls (1990-1992) – before launching Egoli Films in 1993 as a platform for his own films as well as those of other filmmakers. Egoli’s productions included Meurer’s own Jeckes – Distant Relatives (1997), Thomas Hausner’s Made in Germany (1997), Fredrik von Krusenstjerna’s Lost Sons (1999), Judith Keil & Antje Kruska’s Exit East (Ausfahrt Ost, TV, 1999), and Nana Djordjadze’s 27 Missing Kisses (2000). Oliver Damian, the third member of Egoli Tossell Film’s board of directors, joined Egoli Films in 1993 and participated in the MEDIA Program’s EAVE training program for young producers in 1998. As head of production, he controls the physical production of the company’s projects and worked together with Meurer as producer on 27 Missing Kisses. Tossell Pictures and Egoli Films merged in early 2001 to create ”a single, more active, more influential, more adventurous film enterprise“ – Egoli Tossell Film AG. The first productions completed under the new umbrella are Maria von Heland’s Big Girls Don’t Cry (Grosse Maedchen weinen nicht, 2002), Katalin Goedroes’ Mutanten (2002), and Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002), which was shown in competition at Cannes this year. Egoli Tossell Film AG · Burgstrasse 27 · 10178 Berlin/Germany phone +49-30-2 46 56 50 · fax +49-30-24 65 65 24 · email: contact@egolitossell.com · www.egolitossell.com A COMPANY WITH AN ADVENTUROUS SPIRIT ”We had already worked in close proximity with one another so it was logical to bring the two companies of Egoli Films and Tossell Pictures together at the beginning of 2001,“ says Jens Meurer. ”The idea was to reach a critical mass, to be able to afford a more structured apparatus and to make more films.“ “To an outsider, our slate is a quite eclectic collection of projects which we think is one of our strengths,“ explains Judy Tossell, adding that ”none of us work in isolation although we each work as producers on separate films.“ While Tossell’s strength is with working with young German filmmakers, Meurer has been more of a driving force for the development of the company’s documentary strand and its international activities, and Oliver Damian is more the nuts-andbolts production man. ”The bigger a company becomes, the more important something like controlling is,“ Tossell declares, ”so Oliver is important to control the physical production of our projects.“ That’s not to say that he isn’t involved in hands-on production, as he produced Nana Djordjadze’s 27 Missing Kisses with Meurer and is now working with him on Djordjadze’s next project, The Tears of Don Juan, as well as on another major project in development, Shanghai Blues. FOUR STRANDS ”You have what we are about in a nutshell when you look at our projects this year,“ Tossell continues. At the Berlinale in February, the Perspectives German Cinema sidebar presented the coming-of-age feature debut Mutanten by Katalin Goedroes and the highly acclaimed feature documentary Queens of Dust (Der Glanz von Berlin, 2000) by Judith Keil and Antje Kruska. Then, the official competition section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival provided the backdrop for the world premiere of Egoli Tossell Film (ETF)’s ambitious international co-production Russian Ark by Alexander Sokurov. And this autumn will see the release of the big-budget German film Big Girls Don’t Cry by Maria von Heland, which was financed by and produced for Deutsche Columbia Pictures, the production arm of the German office of US major Columbia TriStar. One area that has been missing so far at Egoli Tossell is television. Meurer admits that it is ”not an easy time to move into this area,“ but argues that they ”stand for a certain kind of filmmaking and we feel that there is room for a different kind of television film.“ Currently in development is Fleeting Encounter (Fluechtige Begegnung), a contemporary TV thriller penned by Thomas Knauf, which is to be directed by Christian Wagner. ”It is very hard to separate the strands,“ Tossell declares. ”Up until now, I have been doing first-time German filmmakers, but we are interested in working with them on their second and third films and this could be in English – as is the case with Ed Herzog’s Lively Up Yourself (cf. p. 29) which is set in Jamaica and has a German star, Heike Makatsch.“ BENEFITS FROM INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS As Meurer points out, their experiences from working on international productions such as 27 Missing Kisses and Russian Ark can also be used to benefit the German projects. ”A German film should ideally be international. It can be and should be more so,“ he suggests. ”At the same time, even our international projects, such as those in South Africa, were really made from this German base. Russian Ark was prepared and finished 20 Kino 3/2002
Jens Meurer, Judy Tossell, Oliver Damian Producers’ Portrait Egoli Tossell Film here, so one of our conclusions is not to limit ourselves to one label of either ”international company“ or ”German production company“. We see ourselves as producers in Europe.“ Unlike most of their producer colleagues in Germany, ETF has developed links with major international sales companies such as Canal+, Wild Bunch and Celluloid Dreams ”because they already have an international approach built into their operations,“ Meurer explains. ”Even before a film’s completion, this opens more doors and greater possibilities than the more conventional German model where you make the film and then see if anyone wants to see the film outside of Germany.“ At the same time, this doesn’t mean to say that they have completely turned their back on German sales companies: Judy Tossell had a very positive experience with Bavaria Film International, who put up part of the financing for Achim von Borries’ feature debut England!, and the company’s documentaries tend to be channeled through the Leipzig-based sales agent d.net sales. INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK The company’s international outlook has been reinforced, meanwhile, by the three board members’ participation in various training programs organized by the European Union’s MEDIA Program. Oliver Damian and Jens Meurer have been through the EAVE producers’ training program, Judy Tossell attended one of the first editions of the TV Business School, and she and Jens Meurer are both graduates of the Ateliers du Cinéma Européen (ACE) producers’ program. ”ACE is a fantastic networking experience,“ Tossell enthuses. ”We made a lot of friends, but also colleagues who one can work with as they are a pretty like-minded bunch of producers.“ In fact, ETF will be putting this into practice this autumn by having fellow ACE producer Chris Curling of the UK production company Zephyr Films onboard the Ed Herzog feature Lively Up Yourself as co-producer. ”There is a great level of trust and a good exchange of information,“ Meurer adds. ”That kind of MEDIA support cannot be overrated. Overall, we have benefited a lot over the last ten years from MEDIA, but we all suffer from the overwhelming bureaucracy. That’s a bit of a shame that the MEDIA Program is losing the ”people aspect“ because wherever it exists – such as in EAVE or ACE – it is a really great asset.“ WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS IN STORE While ETF has already made its mark this year with festival pre- Kino 3/2002 sentations of such films as Queens of Dust and Russian Ark, the slate of projects in production and development augurs well for the company’s future. One project coming to the end of its shoot now is the feature documentary Hello Dachau! (Gruesse aus Dachau!) by Bernd Fischer, which is a real-life tragi-comic portrait of Germany’s ”most famous town for all the wrong reasons.“ As Meurer points out, this is a very personal film for Fischer and him, as they were both at school together in Dachau. Meanwhile, a trailer has already been shot for Frank Mueller’s Siberia: Railroad Through the Wilderness, the first IMAX film about Siberia and the famous Trans-Siberian Railway, and the financing looks to have come in place for them to embark on the next stage of shooting in Siberia next spring, with Sir Peter Ustinov in a starring role. Before that, this autumn should see the company partnering with FilmFour Lab and Atom Egoyan as a co-producer on a feature project by Canadian director Alison Murray entitled Mouth to Mouth. Based on a real-life experience Murray had in Germany, the film will shoot in the UK, Germany and Portugal in September and October. 2003 should see Nana Djordjadze embarking on her first English-language picture – The Tears of Don Juan – a romantic love story spanning three generations of a family in Georgia, France and Spain, to be shot on location in Barcelona. And, following the positive collaboration with Andrea Willson at Deutsche Columbia Pictures on Big Girls Don’t Cry, Tossell and director Maria von Heland are now developing a thriller to produce with the US major’s production arm. However, ETF’s ”hottest project,“ according to Meurer, is Catherine, about the simple maid and battlefield whore who became the wife of Peter the Great and Empress of Russia. Award-winning Polish director Agnieszka Holland (Washington Square, Europa, Europa, Julie Walking Home, cf. p. 49) is in place to direct a script by 27 Missing Kisses-screenwriter Irakli Kvirikadze. ”We have an interesting combination of Irakli’s very original, bawdy and sexy style of writing with Holland’s record as a very established and respected director,“ Tossell says. ”It is a passionate love story rather than a conventional biopic, and there are some fantastic roles for the cast. It really, really caught people’s imagination when we were pitching it in Cannes.“ Martin Blaney spoke to Judy Tossell and Jens Meurer 21
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