Film Archive

Starbuck - Holger Meins

Twenty-five years after the death of Holger Meins, filmmaker and former student friend of the deceased, Gerd Conradt takes an in-depth look at the helmsman of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Who was Holger Meins? What led him into the underground? What circumstances resulted in his death, a death which made him the declared symbol of the radical opposition in Germany? What remains of his legacy?

Berlin 1967: A group of young film students start with their studies, among them Hamburg-born Holger Meins. Five years later, Meins is arrested as a member of the Baader-Meinhof-Group. The news images are broadcasted around the world. In 1974, the first prisoner from the Red Army Faction dies as the result of a hunger strike: Holger Meins.

The decisive moments in Holger Meins' biography represent the potentialities of the lives of a whole post-war generation, whereby each document has its own history.

Gerd Conradt was born in 1941 in Thuringia. After studying Photography, he started his film career at the German Film & Television Academy (dffb) in Berlin in 1966. After lecturing for about seven years at different Berlin universities, he directed a series of German poems for the Berlin broadcaster SFB. Since this time he has been working as a director and author for documentary films for television and cinema. His films include: About Holger Meins (1982), The Video-Pioneer (1984), TV-Greetings from West to East (1985), Heavy User (1989), Hold Me - Love Me: Tempodrom in Berlin (1995), Dyngyldai (1996), People and Stones (1998), Starbuck - Holger Meins (2001), Mount Ever-Red (2005), The Spree - Symphony of a River (2007), and Colour Test.6 (2008).
 

Genre Drama, History
Category Documentary Cinema
Year of Production 2001
Director Gerd Conradt
Screenplay Gerd Conradt, Hartmut Jahn
Directors of Photography Armin Fausten, Hans Rombach, Phillip Virus
Editor Neliah Ibeh
Music by Lars Loehn
Producer Hartmut Jahn
Production Company Jahn Filmproduktion/Hanover-Berlin
Principal Cast Michael Ballhaus, Suzanne Beyeler, Manfred Blessmann, Christian Brueckner, Gretchen Dutschke, Enzio Edschmid, Harun Farocki, Thomas Giefer, Alfred Klaus, Rainer Langhans, Peter Lilienthal, Wilhelm Meins, Wolfgang Petersen, Verena Reichhardt, Greta Schiller
Length 90 min, 2,462 m
Format 35 mm, color, b&w, 1:1.66
Original Version German
Subtitled Versions English
Sound Technology Stereo
Festival Screenings Leipzig 2001 (in competition), Rotterdam 2002, Goethenburg 2002, Vienna 2002, Valladolid 2002
With backing from NDR Filmfoerderung in Niedersachsen, NordMedia, MEDIA
German Distributor Neue Visionen Filmverleih/Berlin

World Sales
Jahn Media
Hartmut Jahn
Waldstrasse 11
30163 Hanover/Germany
phone +49-1 71-2 07 89 18
email: info@starbuck-holger-meins.de
http://www.starbuck-holger-meins.de