FILM AS WORK

Wolf Otto Pfeiffer

Genuine
Filmmaking

Artistic Thinking
Film Education
Working on Film as Work

Film can be more than the audiovisual representation of events. Its possibilities as an art form reach far beyond what has become common practice.

This is the question that has occupied me throughout my working life:

Why do some films become works –
while most do not?

I have pursued this question in different roles: as a film director and producer, in the education of filmmakers, and in working with writers and directors on their projects.

Over the decades, this has led to a particular way of seeing film and a particular way of working on it.

I can recognise the potential work within a film project – its idea and the form through which that idea can come into appearance. My work is to uncover this possibility and to develop the film from within it.

Every film presents its own task. Its form cannot be imposed upon it from the outside. It has to emerge from the work itself.

I call this way of seeing and working Poiētology – thinking in terms of the work.

The capacity for it is what I call Artistic Intelligence.

WORKING WITH ME

I work with individual filmmakers as well as with film schools, academies, film institutes, funding bodies, festivals and other institutions.

My work can take different forms.

FILM AS ART

Seminar

A seminar on film as an art form and on the difference between a film that merely presents events and a film that becomes a work.

At its centre is a different way of seeing film: not primarily in terms of plot, character development or established dramaturgical models, but as a whole that has to find its own inner order and form.

ARTISTIC THINKING – HEPTAGRAPHY

Workshop

Heptagraphy is a method for developing non-linear artistic thinking.

A Hepta consists of seven entities placed in relation to one another to form a whole that gives expression to a thought.

The workshop introduces the method through practical exercises and explores its possibilities for artistic perception and creation.

WORK ANALYSIS

Film Analysis and Conversation

A film is examined in terms of its being as a work.

Beginning with its narrative intention, we look at how this intention is realised through the film as a whole: its idea, its form, its inner order and its effect.

Work Analysis can be devoted to an existing film or become the starting point for a wider conversation about film as art.

MASTERCLASS

One Year of Working on the Work

A group of filmmakers develops individual projects over the course of a year.

Each participant works on their own film, while at the same time taking part in the development of the other projects. In this way, the individual work becomes part of a continuous common process of seeing, thinking and making.

Each project is approached according to the task it presents in itself. Its form has to emerge from the particular film.

INDIVIDUAL PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

Working on a Specific Film

I work with writers, directors and producers on individual film projects – from the first conception through screenplay development and production to editing.

The collaboration may consist of a single concentrated intervention or accompany a project over a longer period.

The central question remains the same:

What can this particular film become – and what form does it require in order to become itself?

LECTURE & CONVERSATION

90–120 minutes

A lecture followed by an open conversation on film as art, artistic thinking and the formation of the work.

Possible subjects include Film as Work, Artistic Intelligence, Poiētology, Work Dramaturgy and the limits of conventional storytelling.

The particular subject and form can be developed in dialogue with the inviting institution.

ABOUT ME

I am a film director, producer and teacher and have spent much of my working life exploring the artistic possibilities of film.

I have directed and produced films, founded and led a screenwriting school, taught filmmakers and conducted year-long masterclasses in which writers and directors developed their own projects.

The films I produced have received numerous international awards and, among other distinctions, two Academy Award nominations.

Over the years, my work has increasingly concentrated on a fundamental question: what makes a film a work?

From this has emerged my own approach to film – Poiētology, or thinking in terms of the work – and a practice devoted to recognising and developing the work-potential inherent in an individual film project.

Today I work with individual filmmakers as well as with film institutions worldwide.

CONTACT

Wolf Otto Pfeiffer

FilmGeist
filmgeist.org
wop@filmgeist.org
+49 179 1320814

For enquiries about seminars, masterclasses, workshops, lectures, work analyses and individual project development, please contact me directly.