Alexander Tuschinski

Life

Alexander Tuschinski attended school in Stuttgart, Germany, and originally wanted to study physics after finishing school in 2008. However, he changed his mind shortly before enrolling at university realizing that film was his main passion, and instead started studying Audiovisual Media at Hochschule der Medien. Graduating 2011 as a Bachelor of Engineering in Audiovisual Media, he enrolled at University of Stuttgart afterwards to study history and literature, graduating in 2014 with his second degree as a Bachelor of Arts. He continues pursuing a master's degree there. He produces his works parallel to his studies.

Prior to 2008, Tuschinski had already produced short videos that he published on YouTube. He is friends with Tinto Brass and Hugo Niebeling whose 1960s films influence his cinematic style. He considers them his "mentors".

Feature films

For Tuschinski, his films Menschenliebe, Timeless and a planned upcoming project called Revolution! form an informal Trilogy of Rebellion: The films are independent of each other, but feature similar themes, styles and the same two main characters (Arnold and Konstantin). The scope of the topics they address increases with each instalment: While Menschenliebe deals mostly with relationships between individuals, Timeless addresses topics from all aspects of society. Break-Up is a smaller film, independent of the trilogy, but featuring the character of Arnold and some references to the other films. As of 2015, Tuschinski considers Timeless "by far" his best film.

Academic writing

Tuschinski has been called an "encyclopledic Brass expert" on Caligula. Tuschinski wrote an essay on Tinto Brass' film The Key.

Restored film

In 2012, Tuschinski restored some of Brass' 1960s films using material from the director's private archive. They were later screened at a retrospective in Hollywood.

Other writing

Tuschinski's first novel "Das Fahrzeug" was published in Germany in 2011.

Music

Tuschinski frequently composes and performs songs and instrumental music for his own films. He occasionally performs his songs live on stage, often combined with comedy routines.

In 2014, Tuschinski published an album featuring classical music recorded on synthesizer and vocoder.

General description

Alexander Tuschinski's films have been compared to "the early works of Woody Allen". He uses an impressionistic camera- and editing-style that is considered experimental by some. His films frequently employ classical music with scenes edited to the rhythm and the structure of the music, as well as satirical songs that are often used to progress the story.

I find it boring when I can predict a film's outcome and find that conventional filmmaking can be quite uninteresting at times. My films have a strange, surrealistic logic to them.

Visual language

Tuschinski himself uses an analogy to language when describing his approach to cinematography and editing, calling different shots nouns (e.g. shots showing an object / a person without any additional intention than showing it, like establishing shots), verbs (shots used to depict an action or movement) or adjectives (shots "describing" things, like quick cut-aways and details), comparing regular visual rules of filmmaking to classial literature, while his way of filming is rather like slam poetry.

To return to the example of slam-poetry vs. classical literature and the comparison to language: I throw around "words", meaning shots, in my films; might use more adjectives, nouns etc., than others, but still each sentence needs subject, verb and object so the receipient understands it. But it shouldn't be worded according to textbook rules, else it gets boring.

In almost all of Tuschinski's films, him and Matthias Kirste share the cinematographer-credit. When Tuschinski is acting, Kirste operates the camera, and when Tuschinski is not seen in the frame, he often operates the camera himself. Sebastian B. is often cast as the lead actor in Tuschinski's films.

Awards (excerpt)

Additionally, Tuschinski's documentary Quasicrystal Research was selected to play during the Australian National Science Week in 2012, being shown in 400 venues around Australia during that week.