About the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis

The Saarbruecken Film Festival “Max Ophuels Preis” is dedicated to the young German speaking film since its establishment. It sees itself as the most important forum for promoting new talents from Germany, Austria and Switzerland and can claim to be the only explicit New Talent Festival in German speaking territories.

In 1980 Albrecht Stuby established the Filmfestival “Max Ophuels Preis”. At that time the Festival started with 700 visitors. As of to date the audience and the number of films submitted have continuously grown and in 2012 the Festival counted more than 42,000 visitors.

The Festival is named after Max Ophuels (05/06/1902 – 03/26/1957), one of the biggest European Film Directors of the 20th century. He was born in Saarbruecken, but left his birthplace as a young man to work at various Theaters in Germany. Some of his first movies were celebrated in the metropolitan City of Berlin. In 1933 this director, who was a member of a Jewish family, immigrated to France and later to the United States of America. In the 1950’s Max Ophuels returned to Europe to realize Film and Theater projects in France and Germany.

Film as an art form stands in the forefront of the Festival and through the name of Max Ophuels also the contention with a long tradition of German film history.

For young filmmakers the participation of the “Max Ophuels Preis” is one of the most important steps in their professional future. Many of the filmmakers that write movie history today stood the first time in Saarbruecken in the spotlight, i.e., Christian Petzold, Andreas Dresen, Dani Levy or the actors Til Schweiger, Christiane Paul and Maria Schrader. Awards in the categories full length film, short film or medium length film support the profile of the Festival, which helps new young talent find to make connections by purposeful networking with lenders, producers, to embody agencies and editorships firmly in the industry.

The Festival offers the audience, as well as the professional film visitors, a versatile and at the same time a focused glimpse of the film works of German speaking newcomers. Active talent search is a natural element for broad and deep spectrum, either by independent filmmakers, free groups, Film schools or public television.

Thanks to the fact that the festival is located directly on the French border, it traditionally cultivates the relationship with its French neighbours. Besides a focus on French, Belgian and Luxembourgian films and “short films of the German- French Master class” there is also a German-French Student Jury that demonstrates what cultural exchange means. In order to serve and satisfy the need and expectation of this region the ¿lm festival “Max Ophuels Prize” works closely and in cooperation with the “Saarlaendisches Filmbuero” , the Festivals Kino im Fluss/ Cinefleuve, which evolved from the Festival SaarLorLux and is being presented in partnership of festivals of the Big region.

The film Festival “Max Ophuels Preis” does not see itself as an exhibition, but as a place of lively movie culture. A movie only lives when one debates, discusses or even argues about a film.

Source: Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis

Directors Tim Graf and Jakob Montrasio edited and subtitled the interviews that were recorded back in August 2011, and are now working on the second rough cut of the film – the first rough cut was a simple collection of all the visual scenes that were available.

The second rough cut mixes mentioned interviews with the visuals from the first rough cut, and the outcome will be the basis for the narration of the film.

It’s currently running at 1 hour and 36 minutes, but not all material has been included yet.

As you can see with the screenshot to the right, the editing is done with Apple Final Cut Pro.

For more daily updates, please visit the Souls of Zen Facebook page at facebook.com/SoulsOfZen.

For fans of Google+ we have opened up a page as well: Souls of Zen on Google+.

Editing, scoring, narrating and color correction will run through 2011 until March 2012.

Scheduled release of the film is May 2012.

CAMERA GEAR

1x Sony Cinealta PMW-EX3
1x Fujinon XS8X4AS-XB8 wide angle lens
1x 32 GB SxS card
2x 16 GB SxS cards
1x SDCard to SxS stick
4x 16 GB SD cards
3x BP-U60 batteries
1x BP-U30 battery
2x chargers

SOUND GEAR

1x Sennheiser wireless microphones
1x Sennheiser microphone
1x Directional microphone
1x AKG K171 MKII headphones (camera)
1x AKG K271 studio headphones (sound recorder)

VIDEO EQUIPMENT

1x Marshall V-LCD70P-HDMI 7″ field-monitor with HDMI
1x Manfrotto tripod
1x Glidecam HD 4000
1x Glidetrack HD
1x Manfrotto Fig Rig

LIGHT GEAR

1x Litepanel

COMPUTER GEAR

2x Seagate 1TB USB drives
1x MacBook Pro

PHOTO GEAR

1x Panasonic Lumix LX5
1x Olympus Pen

August 6: after arriving at Narita airport drive to Tim, repack luggage
August 6. – 8.: Daiyûzan Saijôji (Minami-Ashigara) and surroundings
August 8. – 9.: Overnight in Kakegawa (near Kasuisai)
August 9. – 11.: Kasuisai (Fukuroi)
August 12. – 14.: Sendai catastrophe region, temples, graveyards
August 13.: Kesennuma
August 14.: Interviews at Tohoku university
August 15.: Drive back to Tokyo
August 16.: Hakone
August 17.: Tokyo (interviews and sightseeing)
August 18.: Tôchôji
August 19.: Shop
August 20.: Return to Germany

Welcome!