DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
"As great-grandson I grew up with all of these family stories, however I never had the opportunity to get to know Sergej Stepanowitsch. My interest in these stories goes far beyond the family ties: the history of the twentieth century in its entirety, its events, its contradictions and its possibilities are all mirrored in this complex family saga."
Sergej Stepanowitsch Tschachotin’s courage and zest for action obviously went far beyond the ideas and conventions of his day, and this can be fascinating and frightening at the same time. The topicality of the questions and themes in Tschachotin’s biography intrigue me: cancer research, cell manipulation as a forerunner of genetic research; the notion of a worldwide scientific network (and the way knowledge moved about the world in the era before the internet); propaganda processes and their effectiveness in combination with the media; political and social activism; the theme of atomic weapons (the unstoppable arms race and the threat the weapons pose to any stable world peace). While working on this film, I came to understand that the networks and boundaries in each of our families are perhaps the most archaic and – at the same time – the most stable. These are the true networks and boundaries, the ones we must navigate our entire lives, ones which we may relish but cannot escape.
BIOGRAPHY
Mr. Hars-Tschachotin is an award winning filmmaker and founder of Liquid Blues Production, an independent production and distribution company based in Berlin which focuses on realizing visual content by way of feature films, documentaries and interactive art. Initially interested in development and pre-production, he got his start in film 1999 at Studio Babelsberg as a researcher and location scout for directors such as Jean-Jaques Annaud, Simon Moore, István Szabó, Richard Donner, Wim Wenders, Volker Schlöndorff, and Tom Cruise, working on behalf of Paramount Pictures and Hallmark Entertainment.
Boris Hars-Tschachotin has directed and produced several fiction films, but SERGEJ IN THE URN is his first full length documentary. His films have been selected at over 50 international festivals including Slamdance, Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival, Aspen Shortfest, Clermont-Ferrand and been acquired by brodcasters including Sundance, Arte, NBC Universal, ZDF, YLE Teema.
Born in 1973 in Tübingen / Germany, a resident of Berlin since 1993, he holds a degree in History of Art, Philosophy, Theatre Studies and Cultural Communication from the Humboldt-University Berlin. In 2009/2010 he is a Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Filmography
SERGEJ IN THE URN, debut full length documentary, author, director, co-editor and producer (2004-2009)
CALLING BILL, short fiction film, author, director and producer (2007)
MUTTERSEELENALLEIN, fiction film, co-producer (2004)
LURCH, short fiction film, author, director and producer (1999-2001)
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