Rainer Simon
Rainer Simon ( born January 11, 1941 in Hainichen, Saxony ) is a German film director and screenwriter who was one of the most important directors of the DEFA in the 1980s.
Life and work
Rainer Simon grew after the divorce of his parents when his mother, a secretary, on. At 17 he joined the SED. After graduating from high school in 1959 in Frankenberg and two years of military service in the National People's Army, he studied from 1961 to 1965 at the Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam -Babelsberg, majoring in directing. His studies he finished with a diploma film Peterle and the Christmas Goose Auguste (1964) and was subsequently adjusted by DEFA.
As an assistant director at the DEFA Studio for Feature Films Simon assisted first film director Ralf Kirsten at The Lost Angel (1965 ) and Konrad Wolf when I was nineteen ( 1967). His first film project, a film adaptation of Horst Bastian's novel The moral of the bandits, he could not be realized due to the 11th Plenum of the Central Committee of the SED. In 1966, he staged for the DEFA Studio for popular science films the semi-documentary strip friends of Werbellinsee an international summer camp.
From 1968 he worked as a director at the DEFA Studio for Feature Films in Potsdam- Babelsberg. As a material for his debut film How to Marry a king? (1968 ) Simon chose a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm and combined it with thematic and stylistic peculiarities. More movies followed, such as his second fairy tale adaptation Six soldiers of the World ( 1972) and Till Eulenspiegel (1975 ) according to the film story of Christa and Gerhard Wolf, but also to contemporary films, the critically represented the GDR life. The film adaptation of Paul Canute Shepherd Roman Jadup and Boel in 1981 shortly before the premiere prohibited by the GDR censorship and performed until 1988. Through his political stance, which was reflected in his films as well as his political statements, Simon was a case for State Security, the shadowed him several times and spied on. His greatest success came in 1985 with the film, the director 's wife and the stranger, who was honored at the Berlinale in 1985 with a Golden Bear. The films were The Airship (1982 ), Wengler & Sons (1986) and The Ascent of the Chimborazo (1988 ), a film about Alexander von Humboldt, shot on location in Ecuador in those years.
After the reunification and the collapse of the GDR Rainer Simon turned the films The case Ö. (1990) and Distant Land Pa -ish ( 1993). Above all, he worked in South America, where he conducted film workshops in different countries and the documentaries speak in Ecuador with the Indians of the Andes and the jungle Colors of Tigua, with fish and birds and realized Call of Fayu Ujmu. Also several photo exhibitions originated.
From 1993 to 1996 Rainer Simon worked as a professor at the Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam -Babelsberg.
In 2000, he staged at the Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam Soliman of Ludwig Fels. Appeared in 2005 Simons autobiography Distant Land - the GDR, the DEFA and the reputation of Chimborazo, and his first novel rainbow boa over a German who spends the last 30 years of his life in the jungle of Amazonia.