Volker Koepp is counted among the most significant documentarians to have worked at DEFA and in German cinema as a whole. Born in 1944, he has already directed more than 60 documentaries, in which he zeroes in on people and landscapes in sensitive fashion. High time then to dedicate a book to him, with Grit Lemke now bringing out the volume “Unter hohen Himmeln. Das Universum Volker Koepp” as part of the DEFA Foundation’s publication series, which takes a comprehensive look at his oeuvre. To coincide with the premiere of the book, three of Koepp’s portrait films will be showing, which give insights into some very different biographies. These are the Lithuanian-born Gustav in GUSTAV J. (East Germany 1974), a welder named Karin in TAG FÜR TAG (East Germany 1979), and the agronomist und Isolde in HAUS UND HOF (East Germany 1980). The second program block contains HOLUNDERBLÜTE (Germany 2007), which Koepp shot in the Oblast of Kaliningrad about the children of a region with beautiful landscapes and social problems, a place marked by poverty and migration. (pz) (4.11.)
