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Perspektivwechsel| HFF 37 Becker founded his first company, Vide Film, only a few months after beginning his studies, and then, with Thomas Häberle, founded Indigo Film Production and Becker & Häberle Film Ltd in 1997, which they brought the under the umbrel- la of the listed company F.A.M.E. AG in the year 2000. When F.A.M.E. began to falter along with many other companies at that time, Becker bought back the pro- jects that were still in the development phase and in 2002 founded, with a 51 percent participation by Constantin Film, Westside Film and Rat Pack Film Pro duction, which has meanwhile produced such films as “Hui Buh: The Goofy Ghost” (2006) and the charming “WiXXer” sequel “Neues vom WiXXer” (2007). Becker is currently working with Con- stantin Film on the spy thriller persiflage “Jerry Cotton” with Christian Tramitz in the lead, a tongue-in-cheek tribute to one of the bestselling penny dreadfuls. With Dennis Gansel he is preparing “Die Welle”, the film adaptation of the 1981 novel by Morton Rhue, in which a teacher manipulates his pupils in order to demon strate how such mechanisms as exclu sion and dominatation functioned in the Nazi period. Becker was moved by the book when he was young. And mean- while he has the freedom and courage, he says, to come to terms, as it were, with his youth. Filmmaking is Working with Good Friends An encounter with producer Christian Becker “Producers always interested me more than directors, even in my youth. I was a fan of films by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the two producers of Cannon Films,” says producer Christian Becker, who loves the trashy look of US ’70s and ’80s movies. “I still remember how I stood there in the video library claiming that my father sent me so I could borrow ‘Death Wish’, ‘American Fighter’ and ‘Missing in Action’. I dreamt at the time that I could make something like the Cannon people.” Perhaps, one could speculate, Christian Becker didn’t even need film school be- cause he learned to produce films from scratch. But Becker, who began his studies at the HFF Munich in 1994, rejects this notion: “For me the university was first of all biographically an ideal com bination: learning and at the same time reassuring my parents,” he reflects. “There I noticed very quickly that it was an ex cellent stomping ground for trying out new things. You have to seek and take what you need. You gain an unbelievable amount of comprehensive knowledge. On the technical side, for example. I can still work a camera, insert the film, set up the lights and deal with sound equip- ment. Nobody can tell me in my job that something can’t be done this way or that because I’ve mastered the entire technical side.” Becker met most of the directors whose films mean a lot to him at the HFF. “The greatest potential at the university are its creative people,” summarizes Becker. an die Grenzen.“ Zur Zeit arbeitet er, zusammen mit der Constantin, an der Agentenpersiflage „Jerry Cotton“, mit Christian Tramitz in der Hauptrolle, eine augenzwinkernde Hommage an eine der bestgehenden Groschenheft- Serien. Und, zusammen mit Dennis Gansel, an „Die Welle“, der Verfilmung des 1981 erschienenen Romans von Morton Rhue, in dem ein Lehrer seine Schüler manipuliert, um ihnen zu de- monstrieren, wie in der NS-Zeit die Mechanismen von Ausgrenzung und Herrschaft funktioniert haben. Das Buch hat Becker in seiner Jugend bewegt. Und mittlerweile hat er die Freiheit und den Mut, so sagt er, gewissermaßen seine Jugend aufzu arbeiten. Peter Thorwarth (l.) und Christian Becker am HFF- Set von „Was nicht passt, wird passend gemacht“, 1995 / Christian Becker (l.) und Sebastian Niemann am Set von „Hui Buh“, 2005 / Dennis Gansel (l.) und Christian Becker am Set von „Die Welle“, 2007 / Regieassistentin Andie Kapeller mit Christian Becker am Set von „Goldene Zeiten“, 2005 v.l.n.r.