BEUYS

Beuys, the man with a hat, some felt, and the Fettecke. Thirty years after his death he still seems to be a visionary, way ahead of his time. Back then he was trying to patently explain how “money shouldn’t be a commodity.” He knew that money trade would undermine democracy. But there’s more. Beuys boxes, parleys, lectures, and explains pictures to a dead hare. He asks with a grin: “Do You Want a Revolution Without Laughter?” His expanded concept of art leads him smack in the middle of socially relevant discourse, even today.

A congenial montage of countless, previously untapped visual and audio sources, director Andres Veiel and his team created a one-of-a-kind chronicle: BEUYS is not a portrait in the common sense but an intimate look at a human being, his art, and his world of ideas.

Director

ANDRES VEIEL was born in 1959 in Stuttgart and studied Psychology in Berlin. After attending seminars in Directing and Dramaturgy at the Artist House Bethanien in Berlin, he has been active writing film and theater scripts and lectures at the Free University in Berlin. His films include: A WINTERNIGHT’S DREAM (doc, 1992), BALAGAN (doc, 1993) winner of the IFFS Main Prize and the German Film Award in Silver, THE SURVIVORS (doc, 1996) winner of the Main Prize at DOK.fest München and the Adolf Grimme Award in 1998, the highly-acclaimed BLACK BOX GERMANY (2001) which received the German Film Award for Best Documentary in 2002 and the European Film Award, DIE SPIELWÜTIGEN (2004), THE KICK (2006) which won the Grand Prix Cinema du Réel, the feature IF NOT US, WHO (2011) which screened in Competition in Berlin, and his latest documentary BEUYS (2017).