Films by Pepe Danquart

Germany 2022, 117 min
by Pepe Danquart

Few portraits of artists give us the privilege of getting as close to a painter as if we had free access to his studio. Pepe Danquart was allowed to accompany the painter Daniel Richter for three years. He watched him paint with his camera, negotiate with his gallerist, talk with his publisher, and joke with his companion Jonathan Meese. He interviews collectors, attends auctions, and even visits record stores. In this way, the complex picture of a visual artist emerges, who is as inclined to the abstract as to the figurative and who seems to be constantly searching for the meaning of his work. On the art market, Daniel Richter's paintings fetch top prices - an aspect that neither Pepe Danquart nor the painter himself omit, but which fortunately is not the focus here. Openings, auctions and gala dinners give structure to the film narrative, but its heart is Richter's studio. There we experience him as a craftsman, a restless doer, who reflects astonishingly candidly and self-deprecatingly on his work, which for him is always also a political act. He talks about the process of creation, the effect, the meaning and significance of his own pictures, makes clear statements and, despite all his claims to validity, does not take himself more seriously than necessary. [65 DOK Leipzig, Christoph Terhechte]

Germany, Italy 2019, 116 min
by Pepe Danquart

3,700 km of coastline, a Fiat 1100, and an old travel diary, those are the ingredients for Pepe Danquart’s documentary. Following the footsteps of the great Italian thinker Pier Paolo Pasolini, the filmmaker gains a deep insight into the social reality of present-day Italy. The country is massively affected by globalization, migration and the phenomenon of mass tourism, which, more than ever, is characterised by the same hedonistic conformity that Pasolini lamented more than fifty years ago. Ahead of me the South is a poetic contemporary document, a kaleidoscopic picture of the Italy of today.