Hegemund is the name of the project-collaboration between Gottfried Tollmann & Ralf Hildenbeutel which started initially in 1994 in Los Angeles. The two musicians met working with the label Eye Q Records in Frankfurt where Hildenbeutel produced the albums of Sven Väth or his own project Earth Nation. Tollmann joined with releases like “Baked Beanz” (with Helmut Zerlett & Nicolle Meyer) on Eye-Q’s sublabel “Recycle or Die”.

The two musicians found a common denominator in their love for modern art and master drawings as well as for Bach and the destructured electronic mind music of the 90′ies. In this spirit they released their first album called “TollmannHildenbeutel” in 1995. The music was conceived and recorded in Tollmann`s home town Los Angeles where the artists got stuck in their jeep in the national park of Yoshua Tree , CA, while filming the video “isn`t it a funny bird?” (1995) for the album recording ants in their hive.
It was obviously their sense of humour which made them survive a night in their 4wheel drive surrounded by rattlesnakes.
They had hunted & collected sounds of the southwest and the city and put it in the blender in Ralf`s studio in Frankfurt creating a vivid image of their Los Angeles impressions. The hybrid theory of the electronica and the grand piano, the detuned acoustic guitar, the cries of apes and hornbills.
after their adventures and fun Tollmann and Hildenbeutel decided to keep connected and started to randomly film and record sounds and noise in their newly found haven which should become their second home: Paris. Over a period of ten years they developed their love for french wine and culture and collected a small library which they finally put to good use on this latest release “Hegemund”.

In Hegemund`s “Nuit Blanche” we find the continuation of the idea of tales from 10 cities, the vison of a project the artists had talked about in the beginning.
Each album has the autobiographical and geographical longitude of a life shared in a different hemisphere, the Paris experience being even more ” acoustic” in many ways, even more humorous because of the nonchalantly adoptted musical forms,

Hegemund does not care if you call it “electro bossa” or “jah music” or “le jazz”….they let you know with a wink that they like the deconstruction of pop if it serves their purpose.
Music with a thought and a laugh, but to be taken seriously.

The artwork for the album was made by longtime friend, the creative director of English Vogue and photographer Robin Derrick who used an image from his ‘cut flowers’ series for the album.

(Marie Helene Leclerc , Paris)

The movie, directed by Ralf Hüttner, will be released on the 22nd of April in German cinemas by Constantin Film. Some of the actors are Karoline Herfurth, Heino Ferch and Florian David Fitz, who also wrote the screenplay.

Watch the trailer (German):

The World Premiere will be at the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Filmfestival.

The film is about misanthropic loser Jamie becoming obsessed with a London newspaper’s ‘Missed Connections’ column, in which lovestruck singles attempt to find a stranger who caught their eye the previous day, but failed to say hello to.

Amused by the unlikelihood of contributors finding their soulmate, he hatches a plan in a moment of cynical genius; he starts replying to all of them.

Of course this report did not make change the winners, but it made the organizers of the film festival think and took the critic very serious:

Now, one year later, the Visionale 09 is starting this weekend, and surprisingly Boris himself is now in the Judge of the Visionale 09. This is a now chance to experience a festival from the other side and see if his critics from last year were correct.

For the people living nearby Frankfurt, the Category Young Professionals is recommended. Many short films with a high standard and well done animations will be shown.

More details at: www.visionale-hessen.de

Boris Seewald shared his experiences of making What a Witch and how to use social communities to make films known to a wider audience. He referred to sharing behind the scenes content and knowledge of filmmaking because that is what people (especially young filmmakers) are interested in.

Thomas Praus from Panorama3000 mentioned the importance of authenticity when promoting a film over the internet. One of his projects he supervised was Berlin Calling and he spoke about Director Hannes Stöhr who was in charge of the social communities by himself. Although Berlin Calling was a Film with a low Budget, it became a huge success.

The same strategy was used for Evet, ich will!, supervised by spikaseewald, where Director Sinan Akkus kept an overview on the content.

Dr. Ralf Schulze from UNERHÖRT! praised the possibilities of social communities, but also mentioned the mass of work and time it takes to use the internet for promotion. If it isn’t paid, young filmmakers have difficulty surviving which may lead to being burnt out as a result.

The discussion comprised of different topics which considered film in combination with the web. One big aspect of the discussion were the filmfestivals, which mostly don’t accept films that were previously released on the internet. For filmmakers this can often be an issue. If they release their films on the internet, they won’t have many chances to be shown at festivals. However on the other hand, if filmmakers submit their films to festivals, then they cannot share their work with the social communities.

Filmfestivals might be afraid of losing visitors if the films they present can already be seen on the internet. Concerning this “problem”, an interesting point was mentioned by Dr. Ralf Schulze: Although a film might be released on the internet, people will still go to the festivals, because they want to see the film on a big screen with good sound and to have that cinematic experience. People do not only go to festivals to see the films. They go because of the whole flair and atmosphere of a festival with its people, small talk, networking, contact making and after parties!

Talking about Festival 2.0, Eckhard M. Jäger spoke about his Webcuts festival, which shows films, commercials and music videos released on the web.

The discussion was led by Tillmann Allmer and afterwards What a Witch was screened to the audience.

A little report about the interfilm Academy with some outtakes of this Panel was released in Alex TV:

The 25th international short film festival interfilm berlin is the second oldest German short film festival and is recognised as the second most significant and oldest international film festival in Berlin after the Berlinale.

With 6000 entries from over 110 countries, the 500 best films were chosen to be screened.

With a range of lectures, workshops and panel discussions, interfilm also offers filmmakers, students and newcomers to the media industry the opportunity to grasp the basics, fill in knowledge gaps and gain profound insights into a variety of contemporary themes related to filmmaking.

Director Boris Seewald will take part in the Panel Opportunities and Challeges Facing Film Festivals with Web 2.0 and present What a Witch as an example how to use Web 2.0 for filmproductions and its marketing.

The panel will take place at Pfefferberg Haus 13 Schönhauser Allee 176, 3pm at the 5th of November

Panelguests:

Eckhard M. Jäger
Founder of the Internetfilmfestival Webcuts and Manager of the agency familie redlich

Thomas Praus
Social Media Expert and Partner of the agency PANORAMA3000

Dr. Ralf Schulze
Manager of the UNERHÖRT! Musicfilmfestival Hamburg and Amboss Film+Musik e.K.

Boris Seewald
Filmmaker and Director of the Open Source short film What a Witch

Moderation: Tillmann Allmer

Trailer of interfilm berlin:

Click here or watch it in the embed window below:

What a Witch started on Facebook when filmmaker Michael Franklin created the group “Lets make a film”, asking anybody who was interested in the project to join the group.

What you see here came out of that group. This Open-Source Film is an example how Web 2.0 can gather people from across Europe to make a film without any budget.

With the Score of Ralf Hildenbeutel (www.ralfhildenbeutel.com) , Director Boris Seewald (www.borisseewald.de) created with Producer and DoP Michael Franklin an atmospheric emotion-related shortfilm.

The Project had its Premiere on the 25th of July 2009 at Leicester Square in London UK.

Ralf Hildenbeutel’s new song Slowly Falling leaves. Red, Green, Golden…. is the fitting melodie for these days.

Enjoy!