Joseph Vilsmaier

Award-winning director, producer, and cinematographer Joseph Vilsmaier believes filmmaking is a family affair, and is known for incorporating his wife, Czechoslovakian actress Dana Vávrová, and his daughters, Janina, Theresa, and Josefina, into his works. As a young man fresh from boarding school, Vilsmaier literally learned the ins and outs of film cameras while he learned how to construct them. This led to work as an assistant cameraman, and eventually to being a director of photography. By 1970 he was earning TV credits as a cinematographer, shooting TV movies and documentaries. He steadily built his reputation as a solid cinematographer, and in 1989 took a risk shooting, directing, and producing his own feature-length war drama, "Herbstmilch," an adaptation of the Anna Wimschneider autobiography. The film starred his wife and drew much acclaim. The two would collaborate on 25 titles before her death in 2009. In keeping with his practice of casting all his family in his films, perhaps most extraordinary was Vilsmaier's filming of the birth of his second child, Theresa, and shortly thereafter using this footage in his World War II-era romance-drama "Rama Dama," which fittingly of course starred the infant's mother. The daring filmmaker never shied away from potentially shocking fare, and this trait netted him numerous awards, particularly in his native land of Germany. While in production on the 2006 film "The Last Train," a death camp-set Holocaust drama, the acclaimed auteur was injured when a camera tower collapsed. However, in 2010, Vilsmaier shot, directed, and produced the biographical drama "Nanga Parbat." Joseph Vilsmaier died on February 11, 2020 in Munich, Germany at the age of 81.