Biography:

Eberhard Geick was born in Magdeburg, Germany, on September 18, 1944. After an apprenticeship as a lathe operator and his army service, he joined the East German Television Studio as a camera assistant. From 1969 to 1973, he studied cinematography at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Potsdam-Babelsberg (now Konrad Wolf Film University Babelsberg). After graduating, he underwent master training with director of photography Erich Gusko (Lotte in Weimar, dir. Egon Günther).

In 1976, Geick debuted as a director of photography with the feature film Lasset die Kindlein… (dir. Evelyn Schmidt), produced for East German television and based on a script by Wolfgang Kohlhaase. While shooting this film, he met director Konrad Wolf, who was supervising Evelyn Schmidt’s directing. Wolf invited him to work on his own feature film Solo Sunny, the story of a young, ambitious singer in East Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood. Geick’s photography, influenced by Italian neorealism and Russian, Polish, Hungarian and Czech film traditions, contributed to the international success of the film. In 1982, he collaborated with Wolf again on the six-part television documentary Busch singt, about the singer and actor Ernst Busch.

Geick also worked on director Frank Beyer’s production team for several feature films: Der Aufenthalt, about a young German POW who is falsely accused of murder and imprisoned in Poland; Der Hauptmann von Köpenick, a film adaptation of Carl Zuckmayer’s play; and Abgehauen, based on the autobiography of German singer and actor Manfred Krug, who left East Germany in 1977 after the expatriation of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann. Beyer and Geick had planned another TV production after German unification; but work on Jahrestage (Anniversaries), based on a novel by Uwe Johnson, was halted one month before shooting because of differences between the director and producers.

In a career spanning four decades, Eberhard Geick has shot numerous documentaries and feature films by many renowned directors, including Konrad Wolf, Frank Beyer, Lutz Dammbeck, Helke Sander-Brahms, Ulrich Weiss, Peter Kern, Bernd Böhlich, Reiner Ackermann, Kurt Tetzlaff and his wife Juliane Geick. Like many GDR artists, Geick signed the petition against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann in 1976. In 1984, he decided not to return to the GDR after shooting a film in West Germany and, instead, continued working in the west. One of his first productions there was the love story Laputa, by Helma Sander-Brahms, which screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.

Since the late 1980s, Geick has photographed several films by artist and film director Lutz Dammbeck. Their collaboration started with a short film on three East German artists, Der Maler kam aus fremden Land (co-cinematography with Hartmut Lange). This was followed by Herakles Höhle—a reflection on life in totalitarian societies and the relationship between art and power—and Zeit der Götter, a documentary about the Nazi sculptor Arno Breker. Geick is credited, in tandem with cinematographer Thomas Plenert, for Dammbeck’s films on East German visual art, Dürers Erben and Das Meisterspiel, which was awarded the Silver Dove at the 1998 Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animated Films. Geick was also one of the cameramen who created the look for Dammbeck’s powerful documentary Overgames, an investigation into the roots and influence of game shows.

Eberhard Geick has also taught cinematography at the Konrad Wolf Filmuniversität Babelsberg (1993, 1995-96, 1997-98, 1999-2000), the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (1996), and the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Munich (1985).