1927 - Dresden, Germany
_____________

Wolf Koenig's legacy to Canadian cinema is immense. During a forty-seven year career at the NFB he directed or collaborated on a number of landmark films. During the 1950s, as a director, animator and producer, he made a significant contribution to the Board's development and visibility.

He left Germany for Canada with his parents in 1937 at the age of ten. In 1948 a small NFB crew arrived at the family farm in Ontario to shoot a documentary about agricultural machinery. Young Wolf told them about his keen interest in film, especially animated films. They suggested that he apply to the NFB for a job, and a few weeks later he was hired to work as an assistant in the cutting room.

He soon found opportunities to develop his many talents, including that for handling a camera, and from the start of his career he worked on innovative films of many different kinds. He was cameraman on Norman McLaren's pixillated film Neighbours (1952), which won an Oscar. He designed the animation for Colin Low's The Romance of Transportation in Canada (1953), winning an award at Cannes. Then he was cinematographer for Corral (1954), Low's first documentary. The style of this film, with its poetic approach and absence of commentary, was a first in a Canadian documentary production.

He went on to be part of the creative ferment at the NFB's Studio B with Colin Low, Roman Kroitor and Terence Macartney-Filgate, under the direction of Tom Daly. They were all passionately interested in experimenting, enabling viewers to feel more immersed in the filmed reality. The films with which Koenig was associated were characterized by a sophisticated style and often a subtle irony in their observation of human behaviour and modern society. He regularly shifted between the roles of co-director, director of photography and editor. He was also one of the pioneers of direct cinema, most notably with the series Candid Eye. In the course of a brief and hectic period in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Studio B group of filmmakers were responsible for a number of key works in the history of documentary film. He co-directed such classics as City of Gold (W.K. & Colin Low, 1957), The Days before Christmas (W.K., Terence Macartney-Filgate & Stanley Jackson, 1958), Glenn Gould - On & Off the Record (W.K. and Roman Kroitor, 1959), Lonely Boy (W.K. and R. Kroitor, 1962) and Stravinsky (W.K. and R. Kroitor, 1965).

He also continued to be active in the field of animation. The techniques he used in Universe (1960), a Low and Kroitor film, influenced Stanley Kramer's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), as Kramer himself admitted. He served as executive producer of the animation studio from 1962 to 1967 and again from 1972 to1975.

Thereafter he made some educational documentaries and short fiction films, but mainly worked as producer for a large number of animated films and documentaries. He co-produced Alanis Obomsawin's powerful documentary Kanehsatake - 270 ans de résistance (1993), which won numerous international awards. Koenig retired from the NFB in 1995.

» See also (in English):
Wolf Koenig, entry from The Canadian Film Encyclopaedia, in Film Reference Library, Toronto International Film Festival Group: http://filmreferencelibrary.ca/index.asp?layid=46&csid1=299&navid=46

Wolf Koenig on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Koenig

Wolf Koenig at IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0462860/#Producer

Selective Filmography (as director)
Sur le pont d'Avignon, 1951
City of Gold, 1957 (co-directed with Colin Low)
It's a Crime, 1957
Country Threshing, 1958 
The Days Before Christmas, 1958 (co-directed with Terence Macartney-Filgate et Stanley Jackson)
La Battaison, 1959
Glenn Gould - Off the Record, 1959 (co-directed with Roman Kroitor)
Glenn Gould - On the Record, 1959 (co-directed with Roman Kroitor)
I Was a Ninety-pound Weakling, 1960 (co-directed with Georges Dufaux)
Festival in Puerto Rico, 1961 (co-directed with Roman Kroitor)
Lonely Boy, 1961 (co-directed with Roman Kroitor)
Canadian Businessmen, 1964 (co-directed with Roman Kroitor)
Stravinsky, 1965 (co-directed with Roman Kroitor)
Steeltown, 1966 (co-directed with Rex Tasker)
Where There's Smoke, 1970 (co-directed with Don Arioli, Reg Dougherty, Karl Duplessis, Les Halman, Blake James, Michael Mills, Grant Munro, Kaj Pindal, Dennis Sawyer, Al Sens, Robert Verrall)
Man: The Polluter, 1973 (co-directed with Don Arioli, Hugh Foulds, Chuck Jones, Kaj Pindal, Frank Nissen, Pino van Lamsweerde, Milan Blazekovic, Zlatko Bourek, Ndeljko Dragic, Boris Kolar, Aleksandar Marks, Vladimir Jutrisa, Dusan Vukotic, Ante Zaninovic)
The Hottest Show on Earth, 1977 (co-directed with Terence Macartney-Filgate and Derek Lamb)
You're Under Arrest!, 1979 (co-directed with Don Arioli)
Coming Back Alive, 1980 (co-directed with Paul Cowan, Rosemarie Shapley, Bill Mason)
Where the Buoys Are, 1981 co-directed with Paul Cowan, Rosemarie Shapley, Bill Mason)
John Cat, 1984
Connection, 1986
Listen to Us... Part 1 - Telling it All, 1991 (co-directed with Sally Bochner)
Listen to Us... Part 2 - About Group Homes, 1991 (co-directed with Sally Bochner)
Listen to Us... Part 3 - Chelsea/Naseem/Sandy, 1991 (co-directed with Sally Bochner)
Listen to Us... Part 4 - Robyn/Nathan/Vinnie/Eric, 1991 (co-directed with Sally Bochner)
Pierre Lefèvre on Acting, 1992 (co-directed with Brian Dooley)

» Watch Wolf Koenig's films at NFB.ca
_________
Photo: Wolf Koenig, Colin Low