Dennis Todorovic

A few weeks ago, singer/songwriter/novelist Markus Berges called me to wake me from cre­ative hiber­na­tion and shoot anoth­er music video after almost three years (at the Babels­berg Film Uni­ver­si­ty, sur­round­ed by tal­ent, so by no means wast­ed!) for his band Erd­mö­bel and their 30th anniver­sary sin­gle “Wette unter Mod­els” with the Kaiser Quar­tett (strings).

At the begin­ning of May we spent four entire­ly chilled shoot­ing days with friends in Cologne and Berlin and made this lit­tle film, that brought me clos­er than ever to the favourites of my ‘film youth’: the Czecho­slo­va­kian New Wave of the late 60’s. And now all I real­ly want to do is stuff like that 😉

With: Želj­ka Prek­savec, Patrick Joswig, Pía Miran­da, Bet­ti­na Muck­en­haupt, Lucas Brosch, Dominik Pen­schek, Anisha Cornips and Alma Meis­ter-Math­ieu
DP: Felix Brück­n­er

Some good news: this year I became a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Film Acad­e­my. Look­ing for­ward to a whole bunch of great Euro­pean films!

Anoth­er jury task: at this year’s Film­fest Dres­den, I’ll get to lis­ten more close­ly to the sound­tracks of the nom­i­nat­ed short films and help decide who gets the Gold­en Horse­man for best Sound.

Real­ly look­ing for­ward to my favorite short film fes­ti­val — see you there!

At the begin­ning of the year, I was appoint­ed by the Sec­re­tary of State for Cul­ture and Media (BKM) as a full mem­ber of the jury for pro­duc­tion fund­ing for short films, ini­tial­ly for two years.

A task as grate­ful as it proved dif­fi­cult and hard! The first round is done and 17 new short film projects can look for­ward to pro­duc­tion fund­ing,
all the while I’ll be look­ing for­ward to see­ing the films.

 

A long time ago I worked on this script.… after a long time in devel­op­ment some­times with me, some­times with­out me and en even longer shoot­ing delay due to a cer­tain pan­dem­ic, “Homeshopper’s Par­adise” made it to the big screen at the Hof Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val at the end of last year and to Max Ophüls in Saar­brück­en and can cur­rent­ly be streamed at arte Mediathek. All god things come to those who wait 🙂

The film direct­ed by Nan­cy Mac­GranakyQuaye and star­ring Jane Chir­wa, Stephen Apple­ton, Errol Trottmann and Nas­tass­ja Kin­s­ki was pro­duced by Ziegler Film Baden Baden (Pas­cal Noth­durft). A co-pro­duc­tion with SWR and arte.

          

A few months ago, a let­ter arrived from ger­man broad­cast­er WDR in which the mighty play­er can­celled its involve­ment in cin­e­ma pro­duc­tions until fur­ther notice, and felt com­pelled “under the cir­cum­stances and the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion (…) to review the pre­vi­ous deci­sion-mak­ing process and adapt it to the eco­nom­ic frame­work con­di­tions”.

Short­ly after­wards, my col­leagues Mar­cus Seib­ert and Chris­t­ian Fürst asked me to write a future-ori­ent­ed text for their book about 42 years of the inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion Film­büro NW. My top­ic was set.

Along with a lot of deep and excit­ing insights into more than four decades of inde­pen­dent film­mak­ing in Ger­many, my Text “Wir bit­ten um ihr Ver­ständ­nis (We kind­ly ask for your under­stand­ing)” can now be found in the awe­some, big fat pub­li­ca­tion “Achtung, Achtung! Hier spricht das Film­büroNW”

And fur­ther­more it is print­ed in Revolver film mag­a­zine No. 46, also co-edit­ed by Mar­cus. I was par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased about the lat­ter. For years, his Revolver book “Kino muss gefährlich sein (Cin­e­ma must be dan­ger­ous)” has been a con­stant reminder on my book­shelf.

On May 20th, my friends Erd­mö­bel released their 10th stu­dio album Guten Mor­gen, Ragazzi! The song Wir sind nicht das Volk (lass sie rein) is the sec­ond song after Beherber­gungsver­bot from the album to be accom­pa­nied with a video of mine. A song against nation­al­ism with a “DuTube”-Video about us and the images we make of our­selves and of each oth­er.

My screen­play “Five Songs For The Patri­archy” which I devel­oped togeth­er with Fic­tion Park Enter­tain­ment, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with LavaL­abs and with fund­ing from the Film- und Medi­en­s­tiftung NRW has been nom­i­nat­ed for the Thomas Strittmat­ter Screen­play Award 2022!

 

 

Dur­ing the Berli­nale, the award cer­e­mo­ny by MFG Film­fund will take place in a small set­ting. A video with the high­lights will be avail­able on film.mfg.de from Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 17th, 2022.

I am espe­cial­ly hap­py about the com­po­si­tion of the jury: Hei­de Schwo­chow, Burhan Qur­bani and Damir Lukače­vić.  Well, if that’s not an hon­or!

Since Novem­ber, I am pro­fes­sor of sto­ry devel­op­ment at the Fil­mu­ni­ver­sität Babels­berg KONRAD WOLF. Togeth­er with six won­der­ful col­leagues, I have been offi­cial­ly sworn in this Jan­u­ary.

After almost 20 years in Cologne, I have also moved to Pots­dam Babels­berg with mixed feel­ings of farewell and joy­full expec­ta­tions. I am delight­ed to be work­ing with a whole bunch of tal­ent­ed stu­dents in the fields of screen­writ­ing, direct­ing and pro­duc­ing.

Togeth­er with Meike Hauck, we will be help­ing to shape a new cre­ative and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach to sto­ry devel­op­ment — what more could a young (kind a) pro­fes­sor ask for?

Film- und Medi­en­s­tiftung NRW sup­ports the devel­op­ment of FIVE SONGS FOR THE PATRIARCHY — Span­ning from the mytho­log­i­cal begin­nings of patri­archy till a fic­tion­al dystopi­an end, FIVE SONGS is an anthol­o­gy film that asks if our men-built civil­i­sa­tion is the best human­i­ty has to offer.  Devel­oped with Fic­tion Park and LavaL­abs, the project aims to make cre­ative use of the newes pos­si­il­i­ties in vir­tu­al pro­duc­tion.