Benni Diez

Last updated

Benni Diez
Born (1979-11-19) 19 November 1979 (age 43)
Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany
Alma mater Film Academy Baden-Württemberg
Occupation(s) Film director, film producer, CEO [1]
Years active2003–present
Awards
Website bennidiez.com

Benjamin "Benni" Diez [2] is a German filmmaker and electronic musician, known for his darkly themed short films Pressure Bolt and Kingz , and his debut romantic horror comedy feature Stung.

Contents

Education and filmmaking career

Born in 1979 in Starnberg, Germany, [2] Diez developed a love for horror and science fiction filmmaking in the early 1990s. [3] [4] In a 2015 interview, Diez said: "I always felt like I'm a filmmaker at heart. I always made my own movies when I was young." [5] He began teaching himself computer animation when he was fourteen, using "the very first computer animation program." [6]

Diez worked for agencies and production companies in Bavaria, and made his own videos before enrolling at Baden-Württemberg Film Academy, in Ludwigsburg, in 2002, specialising in visual effects and animation. [3] [4] He said the video Bullet – Highway Patrol (2002), made in three days "from idea to finished clip", was what got him into the academy. [7]

Student filmmaker (2002–2007)

Diez had chosen his area of specialisation knowing it was rare that a directing student "could make sci-fi and horror films"; he "consciously chose effects" despite this, and, "I was lucky enough to do whatever I wanted and still direct live action stuff for my projects." [8]

Making genre films always interested me, and it's sometimes hard, especially in Germany, when you study directing, to do crazy genre stuff. You try to go the more serious, dramatic way, which is not wrong, but would have been wrong for me. So I deliberately decided to study effects because I knew I could still direct my own stuff. [5]

Short films

During his first year at the film academy, [9] Diez collaborated with fellow student Marinko Spahić [10] on a short mixed live action animation film titled Druckbolzen ( Pressure Bolt , 2003), [11] starring Benjamin Biehn  [ de ] and made for €250. [12] The short played at several European international film festivals, winning an award at Aubagne  [ fr ] [13] for sound in 2003, and the Shine Award at Bradford, for technical innovation in 2004. [9] Ain't It Cool News called Pressure Bolt "stunning" and "quite possibly the best film ever made for under five hundred bucks". [14] Diez teamed with Biehn again, as screenwriter, to make a short comic horror movie titled Martha (2004) starring Monika Manz  [ de ] and Hermann Schevtschenko. [15] Diez and Spahić collaborated again in 2004 on a short science fiction film, 90 Grad Different, starring Steffen Wink. [16] That summer, they began their third and longest project together, a thesis film, [17] [18] an alien invasion thriller with hip hop and gangster rap motifs; the title, Kingz (2007) is derived from hip hop slang. [10] The twenty-minute film stars Mathis Landwehr and pop music stars Bela B, Olli Banjo  [ de ], and Claire Oelkers  [ de ], and features martial arts, swordplay, and gunfighting. [19] It was shown at international film festivals, winning Best Short Film at Trieste S+F in 2008 [20] and a Méliès d'Argent in 2009. [21] Todd Brown praised the cinematography and called Diez "an effects god"; the film "fuses a bit of gang culture with bits of horror, scifi, and martial arts action and does it all remarkably well... Landwehr gets time to show his moves and the whole thing just fits together beautifully and cries out to be made into a feature." [18] Five years later, Brown recalled: "that short was far and away one of the best I saw in that year, an amazing blend of scifi, action and horror elements that made me a fan for life." [22]

Commercial work

While studying, Diez did post-production work on films and advertisements for, among other brands, Festina, Audi, Bosch, and Snickers. [11]

Kingz Entertainment CEO (2007–2011)

After graduating with a diploma in visual effects and animation, [8] Diez served as CEO for the Cologne-based production company founded for and named after Kingz from 2008 to 2011. [4] Kingz Entertainment provides visual effects for commercials (for Toshiba and Shell, among others). [11] Diez reused footage from an advertisement made for the International Film School Cologne, Keine billigen Tricks (2009), [23] [24] to create a new short of his own, Space Chase. [25]

Noncommercial work for which Diez provided editing or visual effects included zombie web series Viva Berlin!, [26] [27] Marissa Maghavipata's short film Singularity, [28] and feature films, notably Lars von Trier's Melancholia . [4]

There's a handful of shots where Kiefer Sutherland and his son construct this little wire thing, where they look into the sky, onto the approaching planet, and they create a circle out of wire so they can compare the size and can determine how fast it's approaching. We did a few of those shots because everything behind that wire had to be rotoscoped out and the planet had to be put in, which are fairly small shots, but they were quite difficult to do because pretty much everything had to be painted out and replaced by another background planet. But it was a fun little job, and it was for a great movie. [5]

In 2011, Diez decided that working on commercials took too much time away from being a filmmaker, and left the company to go back to freelancing and pursuing his own projects. [10]

Independent feature filmmaker (2011–present)

Debut feature

When Benni Diez read Adam Arresty's script for Stung , it "called" to him, "on a few very profound levels, mainly to my inner child that watched Alien way too young and got messed up in the brain by it a little bit." [5]

I knew if I was ever going to do a feature film, this was going to be my first, because it's just perfect. It has every element I love about drama. It has the scope where I would dare start really directing actors. Because it's not an ensemble with a dozen characters that have a lot of nuance, it's very compact. [29]

The project took about three and a half years to complete. [29] Stung is a 2015 German-American independent romantic comic horror film starring Matt O'Leary, Jessica Cook, Lance Henriksen, Clifton Collins Jr., Cecilia Pillado and Eve Slatner. [6] [8] [30]

Projects in development

Diez has been named variously as a producer or co-director for the third installment of the Skyline series, Skylines, currently in production with release anticipated in 2020. [31] [32] [33]

Musical career

Diez has been making his own electronic music since about the same time he started making films. [34] [35]

Filmography

Short noncommercial films and videos

  • Buck Bölkers (1995) [11]
  • Bullet – Highway Patrol (2002)
  • Pressure Bolt (2003)
  • Martha (2004)
  • 90 Grad Different (2004)
  • Kingz (2007)
  • Bronko Bros. (2008), concept trailer
  • Space Chase (2009)

Feature films

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sitges Film Festival</span> Annual film festival held in Sitges, Spain

The Sitges Film Festival and also translated as Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia and originally the International Week of Fantasy and Horror Movies, is an annual film festival held in Sitges, Catalonia, Spain. It specialises in fantasy and horror films, of which it is considered one of the world's foremost international festivals. Established in 1968, the festival takes place every year, usually in early October.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andreas Hykade</span>

Andreas Hykade is a German animator, cartoonist, and voice actor. Before studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart from 1988 to 1990, he attended König-Karlmann-Gymnasium Altötting. He worked as an animator in London in 1991, then studied animation at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg until 1995. Since then he works as animation director, partly at "Studio Filmbilder" in Stuttgart, and as the Professor for Animation at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Film Academy Baden-Württemberg</span> Public film school in Ludwigsburg, Germany

The Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg was founded in 1991 as a publicly funded film school in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The Filmakademie is one of the most internationally renowned film schools. One of its major distinguishing characteristics is the close collaboration with three other educational institutions on one campus: the Filmakademie's acclaimed Animationsinstitut ; the Atelier Ludwigsburg-Paris, an inter-university master-class on European film production and distribution hosted at the Filmakademie and in cooperation with notable French film school La Fémis in Paris and the National Film and Television School in London; and the neighbouring Academy of Performing Arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Africa in Motion</span>

Africa in Motion (AiM) is an annual African film festival which takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, in late October/early November. The primary aim of the festival is to offer audiences in Scotland the opportunity to view the best of African cinema from across the continent. AiM 2021 will be the 16th edition showcasing African cinema, the main hosting venue being Edinburgh's Filmhouse Cinema. The festival was founded in 2006 by Lizelle Bisschoff, a South African researcher based in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexis Wajsbrot</span> French film director, producer, and VFX artist

Alexis Mickael Wajsbrot is a French film director, producer, and visual effects supervisor best known for his 2016 horror film Don't Hang Up.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Hertzfeldt</span> American animator

Don Hertzfeldt is an American animator, writer, and independent filmmaker. He is a two-time Academy Award nominee who is best known for the animated films It's Such a Beautiful Day, the World of Tomorrow series, and Rejected. In 2014, his work appeared on The Simpsons. Eight of his short films have competed at the Sundance Film Festival, a festival record. He is also the only filmmaker to have won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize for Short Film twice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Till Nowak</span>

Till Nowak is a German digital artist and visual artist, graphic designer and filmmaker. He received recognition for his grad project, the 2005 film Delivery, and for his art piece The Experience of Fliehkraft and its film offshoot The Centrifuge Brain Project, both released in 2011, and more recently for his 2015 film Dissonance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David F. Sandberg</span> Swedish filmmaker (born 1981)

David F. Sandberg is a Swedish filmmaker. He is best known for his collective no-budget horror short films under the online pseudonym ponysmasher and for his 2016 directorial debut Lights Out, based on his 2013 acclaimed horror short of the same name. He also directed the horror film Annabelle: Creation (2017) as part of The Conjuring Universe, and the DC Extended Universe films Shazam! (2019) and Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023).

<i>Stung</i> (2015 film) 2015 film by Benni Diez

Stung is a 2015 science fiction comedy horror film directed by Benni Diez, written by Adam Aresty, and starring Matt O'Leary, Jessica Cook, Lance Henriksen, Clifton Collins Jr., Cecilia Pillado and Eve Slatner. In the film, a fancy garden party is thrown into chaos when killer wasps mutate into 7-foot-tall predators and go on a grisly rampage.

Pierre Perifel is a French filmmaker and animator, best known for his work at DreamWorks Animation. He is the director of the feature film The Bad Guys (2022) and the award-winning short films Bilby and Le Building. He is an alumnus of École Émile-Cohl and Gobelins, l'Ecole de l'image.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Cockburn</span> Canadian filmmaker and performance artist

Daniel Ernest Cockburn is a Canadian performance artist, film director and video artist. Cockburn won the Jay Scott Prize in 2010 and the European Media Art Festival's principal award in 2011 for his debut feature film You Are Here.

<i>System Crasher</i> 2019 German film

System Crasher is a 2019 German drama film directed by Nora Fingscheidt.

<i>Entity</i> (2014 film) French short science-fiction horror film

Entity is a 2014 English-language French short science-fiction horror film directed by Andrew Desmond and co-written by Jean-Phillipe Ferré about an astronaut who is stranded in deep space and has a close encounter with a sentient entity in the form of a nebula. Entity is Desmond's third film, the previous two also being shorts, Doppelganger and Epilogue. The first French short film to have its sound mixed in Dolby Atmos, Entity has been selected for over eighty film festivals and received, among other honours, a Best Visual Effects Award from both the Hollywood Horror Fest and the FilmQuest Film Festival. Reviews have been favourable, particularly for the short's visual effects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Padovan</span> Italian film director, producer, and screenwriter

Antonio Padovan is an Italian-born film director, producer, screenwriter, and video artist who lives in New York City, known for his short films Socks and Cakes (2010), Jack Attack (2013), Eveless (2016), and his first feature, The Last Prosecco (2017). His video Japan, Beyond (2012) won the first prize at the Stand for Japan Awards, while Jack Attack was selected by more than fifty international film festivals and won dozens of awards and other honors. He was born and raised in the Veneto region, near Venice, but has called New York's West Village home since 2007, and is the co-founder of the Greenwich Village Film Festival.

<i>Jack Attack</i> (film) 2013 American film

Jack Attack is a 2013 American short holiday horror film about a babysitter, her charge Jack, and parasitic pumpkins, written and directed by Bryan Norton and Antonio Padovan, who were also responsible, respectively, for special make-up and mechanical effects, and set design. The short was selected by more than a hundred festivals internationally and won more than thirty awards, and was selected for two anthology films in the US: Seven Hells (2014), and All Hallows' Eve 2 (2015).

One Night is a 2009 Canadian short domestic drama film directed by Shelagh Carter, as a result of her participation in a workshop at the Director's Lab at the Canadian Film Centre. Carter's fourth film stars Jonathan Ralston and Jennifer Dale, and was screened at many international film festivals, winning three awards.

<i>Kingz</i> (film) 2007 German film

Kingz is a 2007 German short action science-fiction horror film created by Benni Diez and Marinko Spahić about two young thugs who go to a nightclub to close out a drug deal only to find something is not quite right about some of the patrons, including the owner ; the ensuing mayhem involves martial arts, swordplay, and gunfighting. The short film was shown at international film festivals and won a Méliès d'Argent in 2009.

<i>Galaxy of Horrors</i> 2017 Canadian film

Galaxy of Horrors is a 2017 Canadian science-fiction horror anthology film consisting of eight short films within larger "wraparound" framing sequences before and after each of the shorts, in which a man wakes from a cryogenic sleep pod and is forced to watch the films as entertainment while his life-support runs out. The shorts are by international filmmakers such as Antonio Padovan, Javier Chillon, Benni Diez and Marinko Spahić, while Justin McConnell directed the wraparound.

<i>Pressure Bolt</i> 2003 German film

Pressure Bolt is a 2003 German short live-action animated film created by Benni Diez and Marinko Spahić. Shot in black and white, the film has been described as a dystopian vision of the future, in which what remains of the human race is worked to death in a set of repetitive and meaningless tasks. The short film garnered praise and awards, mainly for its technical innovation. The short has been compared to the work of Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Alex Proyas, Terry Gilliam, and David Lynch.

<i>Daisy Belle</i> (film) 2018 film by William Wall

Daisy Belle is a 2018 science fiction short film written and directed by William Wall. The film stars Lily Elsie, qualified for an Oscar at Bermuda International Film Festival, won five Pacific Southwest Emmy Awards at National Academy of Televisions Arts and Sciences, was distributed by Dust and shot in San Diego.

References

  1. ↑ "Benni Diez". Xing. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  2. 1 2 "Benni Diez". Rate Your Music . Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  3. 1 2 "Benni Diez Animation". filmakademie-alumni.de (in German). Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg . Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Brunner, Wolfgang (interviewer) (26 April 2016). "Diez, Benni (Regisseur)". Film-Besprechungen (in German). Retrieved 27 April 2019.{{cite web}}: |first1= has generic name (help)
  5. 1 2 3 4 Buckley, Heather (interviewer) (6 July 2015). "Exclusive: Director Benni Diez Talks Stung's Cast, Influences, Road to Directing, and More". Dread Central . Retrieved 4 November 2019.{{cite web}}: |first1= has generic name (help)
  6. 1 2 Price, Jason (July 2015). "Stung: director Benni Diez on the buzz surrounding his directorial debut". Icon vs. Icon. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  7. ↑ "Bullet - Highway Patrol". Vimeo . Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  8. 1 2 3 Logan, Elizabeth (interviewer) (10 April 2015). "Meet the 2015 Tribeca Filmmakers #17: Benni Diez Hopes His Audience Will Go Home and Make Love After Seeing 'Stung'". IndieWire . Retrieved 4 November 2019.{{cite web}}: |first1= has generic name (help)
  9. 1 2 "Low-budget short wins Shine award". 4rfv.co.uk. 4RFV International Broadcast News. Retrieved 4 September 2019.
  10. 1 2 3 "Bio". bennidiez.com. Archived from the original on 28 August 2018. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  11. 1 2 3 4 "Archive of films Stung / Stung". kviff.com. Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  12. ↑ Brown, Todd (15 March 2008). "ScreenAnarchy Exclusive! Stellar German Short DRUCKBOLZEN Online!". Screen Anarchy . Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  13. ↑ "Festival International du Film d'Aubagne Film - Music - Professionnal meetings". aubagne-filmfest.fr. Retrieved 4 September 2019.
  14. ↑ "AICN & TWITCH present our International Eye Candy Column with: FEDOT, DRUCKBOLZEN, CHIKO, RED BARON, EVANGELION, and more!!". Ain't It Cool News . Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  15. ↑ "Martha". Vimeo. Retrieved 2 November 2019.
  16. ↑ "90 Grad Different". Crew United. Retrieved 2 November 2019.
  17. ↑ "Kingz Trailer (2007)". Vimeo . Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  18. 1 2 Brown, Todd (17 February 2008). "Germany Goes Genre Happy With KINGZ". Screen Anarchy. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  19. ↑ Felton, Jude. "Kingz (2007)". The Lair of Filth. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  20. ↑ "Trieste Science+Fiction 2008". Trieste Science+Fiction Festival . Archived from the original on 29 August 2019. Retrieved 2 August 2019.
  21. ↑ "Kingz". www.melies.org. European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation . Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  22. ↑ Brown, Todd (22 October 2013). "The Giant Wasps Are Flying! STUNG Wraps First Day Of Shooting!". Screen Anarchy. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  23. ↑ "Keine biligen Tricks". Crew United. Retrieved 2 November 2019.
  24. ↑ "ifs Cologne". Vimeo. Retrieved 2 November 2019.
  25. ↑ "Space Chase". Vimeo. Retrieved 2 November 2019.
  26. ↑ "Interview: Benni Diez, Benjamin Munz und Daniele Rizzo (2015)". reealgeeks.de (in German). Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  27. ↑ "Viva Berlin VFX making of". Vimeo. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  28. ↑ "Singularity". Vimeo. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  29. 1 2 Robinson, Tasha (interviewer) (24 April 2015). "Benni Diez on Stung's tender romance and messy giant mutant wasps". The Dissolve . Retrieved 4 November 2019.{{cite web}}: |first1= has generic name (help)
  30. ↑ "Bio". bennidiez.com. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  31. ↑ Golden, Lee B. III. "SKYLINES: Cha-Lee Yoon To Join Liam O'Donnell's New Sci-Fi Action Threequel [EXCLUSIVE]". Film Combat Syndicate. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  32. ↑ "Currently in production". Southbox Ent. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  33. ↑ "Skylines". Cinando. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  34. ↑ "Music". bennidiez.com. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  35. ↑ "Benni Diez". CD Baby . Retrieved 5 November 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.