Uli M Schueppel (born May 7, 1958 in Erbach, Germany as Ulf Schüppel) is a German director und documentary filmmaker. The M in the middle of the name is no abbreviation of a name, but a reference to the Elvis Presley-Song “Trouble”: My middle name is misery. It is written without dot.
Life and work
Early childhood and youth
Schueppel is the son of the visual artist and author Hem Schueppel and the educationalist Christine Schueppel, (born as Christine Irmer) and has a younger sister, Heike. The father was an oppositional political activivist in East Germany and sent to the Soviet gulag of Vorkuta. Diplomatic reasons delivered him and he was able to move 1955 to West Germany. In 1956 his wife left the East Germany with the two children, and the family moved to Güttersbach. The father was offered a professortship at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences for aestethics and communication, so the family moved to Friedrichsdorf.
Schueppel attended Humboldt-Gymnasium in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe. After this, he stayed in Paris and then studied German studies, Romance studies und Linguistics at Heidelberg University. Simultanuously he created a Spoken word-formation named Poesie & Krach and published some Compact Cassette and magazines with poetry. Additionally he produced his first shortfilms and wrote film reviews. When he realized that his ambitions went more and more to creating films, he discontinued his studies and moved in 1983 to West-Berlin.
1980s
In 1984, Schueppel started his studies at Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin and shot is first shortfilms, playBack2 (1985) and Kopierer gegen Kopierer (1986). Hanging out with his friends of the bands Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds und Crime & The City Solution in the legendary studios of Hansa Records inspired him producing his first longer movie Nihil, oder alle Zeit der Welt. A lot of friends played in the film like Friedrich Wall, Olivier Picot, Gesine Bohle, Kai Fuhrmann und Blixa Bargeld. The soundtrack was composed by Alexander Hacke. The film won several prices like the Special Jury-Award, of the World Film Festival in Montreal 1988, the soundtrack came out second in 1989 at the Nino-Rota-Preis für Filmmusik of the German filmfestival Trossinger Filmtage.
The titlestory of the international moviemagazine Filmfaust was devoted for the film.
Since 1988, he anchored parallel to his filmstudies the nightly radioshow Slime-Line Show once a week together with Johannes Beck, on the German alternative radiostation Radio 100. Once they simulated the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hundrets of people called the radiostation. After this the Radio cancelled the whole show.
Schueppel graduated 1989 with the documentary film The road to god knows where/Life at the paradiso. Which documents the tour of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds through the US in the year 1989. The film includes a lot of interviews with friends and other important musicians of this time, like Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld, Kid Congo Powers, Lydia Lunch, Rayner Jesson und Thomas Wydler. In the year 2008, the film was voted under the 20 best musicmovies of all the time of the reader and journalists of Total Film.
1990s
With the British-Canadian artist Susan Turcot he realized 1990 the short-film A Priori with filmmusic of Alexander Hacke. In the same year he shot the documentation The Song in which the band Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds records the filmmusic “Till The End Of The World” from Wim Wenders-movie Until the End of the World. 2004 there was a re-release of The Song in a new arrangement.
1992 Schueppel made his first fictional movie Vaterland. In the film an Algerian, the father kidnaps his son into Germany. The soundtrack was again composed by Alexander Hacke and Mick Harvey. The movie won 1993 the OCIC-award although there was a veto of the Vatikan.
1993, Jahre der Kälte came into being, which disputes the way of political ex-convicts from GDR till to sibirian gulags. Schueppel faced up with this film the destiny of his father´s. Soundtrack was composed by Blixa Bargeld and released under Bargeld – Commissioned Music.
1995, he made the documentation Sid&Nancy–Ex&Pop, based on the theaterplay Sid & Nancy, including the German filmactors In dem Film spielten Ben Becker, Meret Becker, Alexander Hacke, Otto Sander und Barbara Philipp.
1997, he shot Der Platz, a documentation about the construction work of Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Soundtrack was made by FM Einheit. From the raw material he made a second film, the shortfilm ‘’Im Platz’’ (ReMix-Potsdamer Platz), based on the poem of the expressionistic writer Paul Zech from the year 1920, spoken by the German actor Otto Sander.
2000s
1999/2000, he produced one of the first German full-length movies in Mini-DV: Planet Alex, stories around of Alexanderplatz of Berlin with the German actors Marie Zielcke, Baki Davrak, Nadeshda Brennicke, Ben Becker, Andreas Schmidt, Birol Ünel, Marusha, Meret Becker, Regine Zimmermann, a.s.o. Soundtrack was composed by Mick Harvey and Alexander Hacke. The film was shown at dozents of international filmfestivals and Museum of Modern Art and was 2002 nominated for Deutscher Fernsehpreis in the categories Best Filmsoundtrack and Best female supporting actress.
For the Berlin Beta filmfestival he iniiated 2001 the digital fiction-award. The festival was 2002 new organized under the name b.film & digital vision Festival and Schueppel curated there the digital vision section and the programming of the films. At the conference Medienwoche Berlin-Brandenburg he was curator for the section digital entertainment . He gives a lot of lectures about digital filmmaking.
For Berlin International Film Festival he created 2001 the official trailer which opens since 2002 all films for all sections. Since 2002 he gives lectures for dramaturgy and filmdirecting" at the dffb in Berlin and Netherlands Film and Television Academy with special focus on musicdocumentation.
2005 he shot Santos – Heldentaten, die keiner braucht with the german actor Ben Becker. 2006 the filmdocumentation BerlinSong, a musicfilm about the Myth of Berlin. 2006/2007 he made several photo/film-installations together with the norwegian photographer Marie Sjoevold, which was presented in Oslo, Kopenhagen and Jogjakarta
2007/2008, he made the film Der Tag, in which he discussed the human mortality. Soundtrack was composed again by FM Einheit. Der Tag won 2009 the New Berlin Film Award at Achtung Berlin Festival.
2007/2008, he made the documentary den Dokumentarfilm Von Wegen about the first concert the band Einstürzende Neubauten made in Eastern-Berlin in the concerthall of VEB Elektrokohle Lichtenberg. Schueppel crossed in the film scenes shot from 1989 with actual shots. The concert was co-initiated by Heiner Müller together, who gave a speech with the french minister of culture Jack Lang. Von Wegen was shown in the program of the 59. Berlin International Film Festival. And was released unter the title “Elektrokohle (Von Wegen)”. The documentary was shown at a lot of festivals and exhibitions worldwide on the occasion of the anniversary of 20 years fall of the Berlin Wall.
2009, he got the “Underground Spirit Award” of the 16. European Film Festival Palic for the extraordinary achievement for independent filmmaking.
2010, he released tranzania.living.room, which shows a trip between Tanzania and Germany. It has its premiere at the 39. International Film Festival Rotterdam.
2010/2011, he shot Brötzmann – Da gehört die Welt mal mir, a documentation about the band Caspar Brötzmann Massaker in the Berlin club Berghain.
Schueppel is member of the European Film Academy. Uli M Schueppel lives in Berlin and is father of a son (* 2000). —Wikipedia
