Happy 60th Birthday, Judith Kaufmann!
Judith Kaufmann, who was born in Stuttgart in 1962 and grew up in Berlin, is one of the busiest and most successful cinematographers in Europe.
Judith Kaufmann was nominated for the German Film Award for the first time for her cinematography on the prize-winning drama Four Minutes (2006). In 2003, she won the Bavarian Film Award for Elefantenherz (Elephant Heart, Züli Aladag, 2002) as well as the German Camera Award for Shattered Glass. Two years later, she won the Hessian Film and Cinema Prize for Fremde Haut (Unveiled, Angelina Maccarone, 2005); in 2010, she won the German Film Critics’ prize and the German Camera Award for When We Leave. Her work was acknowledged with the renowned Marburg Camera Award in 2006 and the honorary prize of the German Film Award’s advisory board in 2012. The following year, she received a star on the “Boulevard of Stars” in Berlin. Judith Kaufmann was delighted to receive two German Film Award nominations in 2019, for All About Me and Just a Woman.
Judith Kaufmann’s film work is characterised by her striking, consistent imagery and her zest for experimentation, which goes hand in hand with the film’s content. For all their differences in genres and styles, her films unite her interest in the margins of society with sociopolitical relevance. She uses her camera’s eye to establish proximity to the protagonists without imposing herself on the audience. Judith Kaufmann masters the intensity of the hand-held camera as effortlessly as she does the opulent camera movement. With her unerring feeling for light, contrast, colour and composition, she creates imagery that is richly atmospheric.
Der Junge muss an die frische Luft (All About Me, 2018), directed by Caroline Link
Even as a child of the 70s in the Ruhr Valley – a region marked by coal and Carnival – little Hans-Peter makes the people around him laugh; this talent will later make him one of the best-known German comedians. Yet he can’t seem to cheer up the most important person of all, and his mother commits suicide when he’s nine years old. All About Me is a warm screen version of Hape Kerkeling’s autobiography by the same title. A touching childhood story that’s both funny and sad, the film employs a wealth of local colour and period atmosphere to authentically depict Hape‘s surroundings.
The film is available on Goethe on Demand, you can access it
via this link.
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