Biography:

Günter Reisch was born on November 24, 1927 in Berlin. At the age of 16, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He returned to Potsdam in the fall of 1945, after his release from an American POW camp. In 1948, Reisch joined DEFA’s Young Directors’ Studio. There he worked as an assistant director—first under Gerhard Lamprecht (Emil and the Detectives) and later under Kurt Maetzig and Slatan Dudow—until he became a full-time DEFA employee in 1955.

Reisch’s directorial debut was Junges Gemüse, a film that adapts motifs from Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 play, The Government Inspector, to an East German context. In the following years, his films alternated between comedies and historic works. Anton der Zauberer, one of his most successful comedies, was invited to screen at the 1979 Berlin International Film Festival; unfortunately, due to the festival’s inclusion of The Deer Hunter, a controversial American film about the Vietnam War, the Eastern European countries decided to boycott the festival and Reisch’s film was not shown.

Günter Reisch either wrote or co-wrote almost all the scripts for his films. He collaborated several times with Günther Rücker, including on the film Wolz – Leben und Verklärung eines deutschen Anarchisten—inspired by the life of Max Hoelz, an anarchist in the Weimar Republic—and on the internationally recognized film Die Verlobte (1981 Crystal Globe, Karlovy Vary Film Festival). Reisch also worked with the many of the greatest East German actors, including Armin Mueller-Stahl, Erwin Geschonneck, Eva-Maria Hagen and Jutta Wachowiak.

Reisch has taught at the Hichschule für Film und Fernsehen in Potsdam-Babelsberg, the Bauhaus Universität in Weimar and the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne. He has also mentored younger generations of filmmakers, serving for instance as the advisor for Andreas Dresen’s debut film Stilles Land and Gordian Maugg’s Der olympische Sommer. In 2013, Reisch was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the DEFA-Stiftung. Günter Reisch lived in Berlin until his death in 2014.

[See also: guenter-reisch.de]

Festivals & Awards: