This prize was first presented in 1986. The prize consists of a sculpture from the catalog of the Hof International Film Festival, an object from the State Technical College for Product Design in Selb, and is dedicated to persons closely connected to Hof and the festival. The awardees are generally not represented with a film in the official festival program during the year the award is presented.
Peter Goedel, born in 1943 in Torgau on the Elbe, is a German author, director and film producer of feature films and television movies. He left the GDR with his parents and brother shortly before the Wall was built in 1961. Peter Goedel, who was drawn to the theater at an early age, studied literature and theater studies, art history and philosophy in Cologne and Munich and trained as an actor at the same time. He worked as an actor, dramaturge and assistant director at various theaters before turning to film and initially working as an assistant director on various film and television productions. From 1973, Goedel made his first films for WDR and founded the Peter Goedel Filmproduktion in Munich in 1978.
His work includes a wide-ranging filmography, which moves between documentary and feature film. In DAS ZELLULOLOID, DAS LÄSST EINEN NICHT LOS (1979) and PETER PRZYGODDA, SCHNITTMEISTER (1993), the filmmaker explores the medium of film itself, devotes himself to the Faber-Castell pencil dynasty (1995), shoots a feature on 50 years of the Cannes Film Festival (1996) and portrays the famous writer Elias Canetti in ELIAS CANETTI. A JOURNEY INTO THE PROVINCE OF MAN (1975).
Goedel has been nominated for prizes for his films both nationally and internationally and has received several awards. He was nominated for the German Film Award for his literary adaptation DAS TREIBHAUS (1987), in 1993 he made the feature film TRIP NACH TUNIS based on the Highsmith novel “Das Zittern des Fälschers”, and with TANGER - LEGENDE EINER STADT (2000) he won the Grand Prix at the International Film Festival in Figueira da Foz (Portugal). In 2011, he made the film DIE NACHT IST NICHT ALLEIN ZUM SCHLAFEN DA about the Munich “Fraunhofer Schoppenstube”, a meeting place for night owls, whether workers, artists or intellectuals, who gathered at night around the legendary landlady Gerti.
His film TALENTPROBE celebrated its world premiere at the Hof Film Festival in 1980 and is being shown this year in the HoF Classics series. Peter Goedel is a guest in the Upper Franconian city almost every year, with or without a film.
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