Mel Brook's film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was filmed in Munich, and included footage of this charming city, as well as the surrounding countryside. Many of the OOmpah-Lumpas were Germans (as were most of the extras), and they didn't know the text to their songs.
Mr. Otto's stadium roof canopies for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich were widely admired for their lightness and strength.Credit
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In an announcement abruptly moved up after his death, the German architect Frei Otto
on Tuesday was named the winner of the Pritzker Prize in recognition of
his airy tentlike structures and other inventive feats of engineering.
Mr.
Otto, 89, died in Germany on Monday, two weeks before he was to be
named this year’s laureate, the prize jury said. He is perhaps best
known for roof canopies designed for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich,
admired for their blend of lightness and strength.
“He
has embraced a definition of architect to include researcher, inventor,
form-finder, engineer, builder, teacher, collaborator,
environmentalist, humanist, and creator of memorable buildings and
spaces,” the jury said in its citation.
The
Pritzker is regarded as architecture’s highest honor and usually goes
to a living architect. The committee said it was the first time that a
winner had died before the announcement was made.
Mr.
Otto learned of his selection early this year when Martha Thorne, the
prize’s executive director, flew to Stuttgart to inform him of the
jury’s choice. He was blind but otherwise in good health, the panel
said. Mr. Otto was honored and surprised, according to Edward Lifson, a
spokesman for the prize.
“I’ve
never done anything to gain this prize,” Mr. Otto was quoted as saying.
“Prizewinning is not the goal of my life. I try to help poor people,
but what shall I say here — I’m very happy.”
Mr.
Otto may not have been a household name, but he was widely esteemed in
the profession. Prominent architects had quietly pushed for him to
receive the award for years.
“Time
waits for no man,” said Peter Palumbo, the Pritzker chairman, in a
statement, calling Mr. Otto’s death “a sad and striking example of this
truism.”
The
announcement was originally to be made on March 23. The architect Frank
Gehry was to award Mr. Otto the prize at a ceremony on May 15 at the
New World Center in Miami. That will proceed as scheduled, with past
Pritzker laureates speaking there about Mr. Otto’s life and work.
Mr.
Otto first became known for tent structures used as temporary pavilions
at the Federal Garden Show in Germany and other events in the 1950s.
His large-scale roofs for the 1972 Olympics stadium in Munich, designed with Günter Behnisch,
defied expectations, though the games were vastly overshadowed by the
massacre of 11 Israeli athletes there by Palestinian terrorists.
Mr.
Otto often designed in collaboration with others, collaborating with
Shigeru Ban on Japan’s pavilion for the 2000 Hannover Expo in Germany
and with Rolf Gutbrod on the West German pavilion at the Montreal Expo
of 1967.
Born
in Siegmar, outside Chemnitz in eastern Germany, Mr. Otto grew up in
Berlin. He designed glider planes as a hobby, fascinated by the
structural forces at work when thin membranes are stretched over light
frames.
During
service as a pilot in the Luftwaffe during World War II, he was
captured near Nuremberg, Germany, and spent two years as a prisoner of
war near Chartres in France, where he worked as a camp architect,
learning to build various structures with the minimal materials
available.
After
the war Mr. Otto returned to study architecture at the Technical
University of Berlin, where he earned a doctorate in civil engineering
in 1954.
In
a clear reaction to the heavy columned buildings commissioned under the
Third Reich, Mr. Otto’s work was lightweight, democratic, low-cost and
sometimes temporary.
After
a trip through the United States, where he viewed the work of Frank
Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and others, Mr.
Otto became a freelance architect in 1952, opening an office in Berlin.
He went on to found several institutions dedicated to lightweight
structures.
He
was inspired by “natural phenomena — from birds’ skulls to soap bubbles
and spiders’ webs,” the British architect Richard Rogers, a member of
the Pritzker jury and a past laureate, said in a statement prepared
before Mr. Otto’s death.
Mr.
Otto’s work has been widely recognized. In 2006, for example, he won
the 18th annual Praemium Imperiale prize for architecture, awarded by
the Japan Art Association; in 2005 he received the Royal Gold Medal for
architecture from the Royal Institute of British Architects.
“Frei
Otto is one of the great architects and engineers of the 20th century,”
Mr. Rogers said. “His work has inspired and influenced modern
architecture, as we all learn to do more with less, and to trade
monumental structures for economy, light and air.”
It's a dream come true for Lennart Ruff: The Academy of Motion Pictures
in Beverly Hills has awarded the young German filmmaker the Student
Academy Awards gold medal - placing him firmly on the path to success.
Hollywood calling!
Lennart Ruff was at home with his girlfriend when the
surprise call came through from the dream factory. On being told that
he had won in the category Best Foreign Film, Ruff says he "turned
bright red from head to toe" in excitement.
Lennart Ruff is the third student of Munich's
(University of Television and Film) - the "HFF" - to have won the
Honorary Foreign Film Award. The prize has been awarded since 1972 by
the
in Beverly Hills, and is kind of a "little brother" to the more famous
Academy Awards. After all, its winners often end up being part of the
main event in future years.
Between dream and reality
On the way to Hollywood: "Nocebo" director Lennart Ruff and producer Tobias Huber
Lennart Ruff has just completed his studies, and the award is
for his graduation film, "Nocebo." Ruff won the gold medal - while a
Berlin-based colleague, Peter Baumann, was awarded the bronze for his
short film "Border Patrol."
"Nocebo" is an emotional, action-packed 40-minute thriller, full of
disorientating imagery. The central figures are a young couple who've
been taking part in a medical study. 22-year-old Christian and his
girlfriend Anna discover that one of the patients has died and the
doctors are hushing it up. Christian wants to rescue his girlfriend and
get her out of the clinic, but he soon realizes someone is after him. To
complicate matters still further, Christian suffers from paranoid
schizophrenia, and the line between dream and reality starts to blur.
In the film, dream and reality start to blur
Founding a production company
The young director was interested in playing with reality partly because
he also sees it as a metaphor for film in general. "We spend the whole
time staring at a projection - it's just light being transmitted through
a little picture," Ruff explained. "And yet our feelings are real."
And that's exactly what his film his about, he said. "In the end it's
not all that relevant whether Christian really had this experience or
not, because he did experience it emotionally."
"Nocebo" was a co-production that not only involved the two major
television channels Bayerischer Rundfunk and Arte, but also two
production companies that were started by students and graduates of the
film school.
The HFF network
Professor of film Andreas Gruber says professional mentoring is part of the school's concept
Tobias Huber, one of the founders of the production company
Menelaos-Film, is still a student. He says it's quite usual for people
at the HFF to start their own company before they graduate.
Huber really values all the contacts the students get to make during
their studies. He said precisely because the HFF is a small school, one
gets to meet many people of all ages and nationalities - and make
numerous contacts.
"It's very useful if you want to produce," Huber said. People often stay
in touch after a student has graduated, and these contacts can help
with the production and financing of a film, as well as with tax and
legal advice.
Lennart Ruff said he also enjoys the school's international atmosphere.
There are students in his year from Colombia, Finland, Korea, Austria -
quite the mixture. "There are also lots of successful film people
working at the HFF and sitting with you in the cutting room," he says.
Mentors support the students whenever they can. "That's no coincidence;
it's part of the school's concept," emphasized Andreas Gruber. The HFF
film professor spoke especially highly of the program
which supported the film "Nocebo."
Future stars
The HFF receives hundreds of applications every year for just 30 places
The HFF in Munich can justifiably call itself the cradle of
Germany's future Oscar-winners. It has already produced numerous
award-winning young directors, two of whom also boast Academy Awards:
Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck for
"The Lives of Others" in 2007, and
Caroline Link in 2003 for
"Nowhere in Africa."
No wonder, then, that the HFF receives hundreds of applications each
year. It only takes 30 students, of whom only 10 get onto the Cinema and
Feature Film course. Applicants have to solve two video tasks, and hand
in a short narrative film and a self-portrait as well as photo
documentation and a short film pitch.
"The most important thing is that your decision to make films has to be a
wholehearted one," says Lennart Ruff. "You can't do this halfway."
