Volker Koepp

Volker Koepp
Born (1944-06-22)June 22, 1944
Stettin, Pomerania, Germany
Occupation Documentary film producer
Political party SED

Volker Koepp (born 22 June 1944 ) is a German documentary film producer.[1]

Life

Koepp was born in Stettin, a German port city then being subjected to a sustained campaign of Strategic bombing during World War II. By the time the city was taken over by the Red Army in April 1945, Stettin was virtually deserted, with only approximately 6,000 ethnic Germans remaining.[2] Following the ethnic cleansing of the native population after May 1945 Stettin became a Polish city and Koepp's early schooling took place in Berlin. He passed his school leaving exam in 1962 in Dresden, German Democratic Republic. On leaving school Koepp undertook training as a machinist, emerging with an appropriate qualification certificate from the Dresden Turbine Factory in 1963. He than studied for two years at the Dresden University of Technology.[3]

From 1965 till 1969 he undertook a period of special study at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Shortly before his graduation he was deregistered because the authorities noticed his friendship with Thomas Brasch, who had distributed leaflets opposing the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Despite targeted as a dissident, however, in other respects former fellow students remember Koepp as a dedicated member of the Free German Youth leadership at the academy, strongly committed to the exposure and expulsion of those fellow students identified as guilty of false political motives, and on these grounds deserving to be deregistered. He produced a student film called: "We have already built an entire city" ("Wir haben schon eine ganze Stadt gebaut") in 1968, and in 1969 Volker Koopp received his degree as a director and script-writer from the national Film Academy.[3]

Despite the difficulties in his early career, Koepp was given a permanent position with the National Film-studio as a documentary film producer in 1970, although he was subject to Stasi oversight and mistrust, particularly with regard to travel restrictions. Koeppen produced several long-running documentary sequences, including a series concerning young hosiery factory in Wittstock produced between 1974 and 1997, and a series of "landscape films".[3] In 1984 he was awarded the Findling Award for his Leben in Wittstock.

The entire political situation changed in November 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the German reunification in October 1990. Since the collapse of the Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft Koepp has been working as a freelance director, producer and script-writer.[3]

Filmography

References

  1. ↑ Elke Schieber. "Koepp, Volker * 22.6.1944 Dokumentarfilmregisseur" (in German). Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur: Biographische Datenbanken. Retrieved 17 May 2015.
  2. ↑ Tadeusz Białecki, "Historia Szczecina" Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1992 Wrocław. Pages 9, 20–55, 92–95, 258–260, 300–306
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Volker Koepp Germany". Doc Alliance Films, Prague. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
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