Filmmakers

Written, Produced
and Directed by KATHARINA OTTO-BERNSTEIN
Producer PENNY CM STANKIEWICZ
Editor BERNADINE COLISH
Sound GERALD SAMPSON
Original Score MIRIAM CUTLER
Cinematographer IAN SALADYGA
After Effects Editor JOSEPH RUSCITTO
Prod. Sound Mixers GERALD SAMPSON
JEFFERY LIVESEY
SCOTT BREINDEL
Additional Camera ERIC SEEFRANZ
KATHARINA OTTO-BERNSTEIN
PENNY CM STANKIEWICZ
ROBERT PENNINGTON
STEPHAN LANG
JORN WEISBRODT
Contributing Editors ROBERT PENNINGTON
SHASWATI TALUKDAR
DAVID GROSBACH
Research AP DANIEL VATSKY
Post Production POSTWORKS, NY
Sound Mix PHOTOMAG / PAT DONAHUE
Sound Effects Editor JEFF ROWE
Assistant Editors JOSEPH RUSCITTO
SHASHWATI TALUKDAR
KRISTIN JULIO
CHELSEA HORENSTEIN
Production Assistants CARY WALKER
CRAIG ROUBILLARD
ANTHONY GREGORY
PETER M. BUMGARNER
Online Producer TRACEY SOAST
Online Editor BENJAMIN MURRAY
Colorist JOHN CROWLEY
Rights and Clearances DIAMOND TIME
CHRISTOPHER ROBERTSON
NORMAN COHEN
JENNIFER REVES
CATHY CARAPELLA

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 Featuring

David Byrne: Musician and founder of the rock band The Talking Heads.
Collaborated with Wilson on The Knee Plays (a segment of the CIVIL warS) and
The Forest.

William Burroughs: Controversial American novelist and essayist associated with

the Beat Generation most famous for his cult novel Naked Lunch. Collaborated
with Wilson (and Tom Waits) on The Black Rider.

Charles Fabius: Executive Director of The Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation.

Philip Glass: American composer widely considered one of the most influential of
the late-20th century and identified with Miminalism. Collaborated with Wilson
on Einstein on the Beach and the CIVIL warS, and other works.

Harvey Lichtenstein: Former President of the Brooklyn Academy of Music in

Brooklyn, New York, and responsible for bringing many Wilson productions to
BAM.

Jessye Norman: International opera star who worked with Wilson on many
pieces starting with Great Day in the Morning.

John Rockwell: Chief Dance Critic, New York Times.

Susan Sontag: Internationally acclaimed writer and critic. Long-time friend and
collaborator with Wilson. Collaborated on Alice in Bed and Lady From the Sea.

Tom Waits: Acclaimed American singer-song writer and composer; collaborated

with Wilson on The Black Rider and Woyzeck, among other pieces.

Suzanne Wilson: Robert Wilsons sister

And
ROBERT WILSON

With
Arnold Aronson, Robyn Brentano, Andy De Groat, Maita Di Niscemi, Christophe de Menil, Felipe
Fernandez, Arthur Holmberg, George Klauber, Trudy Kramer, Stephan Lang, Cindy Lubar, Early
Mack, Carol Mullins, Jim Neu, Benedicte Pesle, John Simon, Ines Somerella, Joseph Volpe,
Jorn Weissbrodt, Geoffrey Wexler

Katharina Otto-Bernsteins book Absolute Wilson: The Biography

published by Prestel Publishing is now available at select retail locations.

www.NewYorkerFilms.com
www.AbsoluteWilson.com

USA, 2006 105 min., Unrated

In English, Color/B&W 1.85, Dolby Digital

3
 SYNOPSIS

This is a film about a full life, and art is part of it. It is not a film about art and life as part of it.
- Katharina Otto-Bernstein

Thats how filmmaker Katharina Otto-Bernstein sums up her new documentary ABSOLUTE
WILSON, a richly provocative and moving portrait of one of the most visionary theater artists of
our time, the legendary Robert Wilson. The film delivers a surprisingly candid look at Robert
Wilson the man, who drops his characteristic reticence and speaks with astonishing candor
about his personal life: his troubled and lonely childhood as the son of the Mayor of Waco,
Texas; his early learning disabilities; his work with disabled children using therapy as a tool for
artistic expression; his departure from Texas at the time of his coming out and his fascination
with the downtown New York avant-garde scene of the late 60s. What emerges is a life full of
impressions, colors and rhythms, making it all the more poignant how Wilsons early hardships
ultimately shaped his ground-breaking aesthetic vision, creating some of the most historic
theatre and opera productions of the twentieth century. All told, it is a remarkable tale of a shy,
stuttering boys triumph over adversity. As director Otto-Bernstein exuberantly puts it,
ABSOLUTE WILSON tells a story for everyone to see how anythings possible -- it really is an
extraordinary American success story.

ABSOLUTE WILSON traces Wilsons themes and visual motifs back to his childhood days
as the son of the Mayor of Waco, Texas -- where Wilson felt like a complete outsider in a world of
churchly damnation and racial segregation. Sandwiched between a beautiful but remote mother
and an ambitious, perpetually disappointed father, Wilson was a lonely boy. His teachers had
little hope for him making anything of his life. His friendship with the African-American son of a
family employee made Wilson even more of an outcast in a community where interracial
friendships were shunned. Eventually, one life-altering moment came in the form of a ballet
teacher named Byrd Hoffman who told Wilson to slow things down. Not only did his stuttering
improve, but the literal and metaphorical notion of slowing down, coupled with his encounter
with the lab experiments of psychologist Dr. Daniel Stern, became the basis for his later
groundbreaking theatrical language.

After an unsuccessful attempt (to please his father) at studying law in Texas, Wilson
changed course and headed to New York City to study architecture at Pratt Institute. During this
time, he came out to his un-accepting father who declared that Wilsons homosexuality could
be cured. New York was a life-changing experience for him: the vibrant new world of design,
dance and theatre, and the work of such boundary-pushing pioneers as Merce Cunningham
and John Cage, spoke to the impressionable young Wilson.

Through Otto-Bernsteins film we observe Wilsons early therapeutic work with

challenged and hyperactive children showing how this cathartic experience would profoundly
influence his relationship to language and movement.

Through its lively mix of interviews including musician David Byrne, writer Susan Sontag
(in one of the last interviews before her recent death), composer and collaborator Philip Glass,
and opera star Jessye Norman, ABSOLUTE WILSON recounts the ensuing years of Wilson in New
York: his experiments in theatre as therapy (working with patients confined to iron lungs); and
the founding of his experimental theatrical commune The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, whose
members ranged from professional performers to curious housewives. We learn about Wilsons

4
adoption of Raymond Andrews -- a deaf-mute, African-American teenager -- which inspired the
directors first international sensation, the seven-hour silent opera Deafman Glance. Louis
Aragon, the co-founder of Surrealism, praised the piece in an open letter to Andre Bretton. The
film presents extraordinary works like KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE, the seven-day-
long play performed in the mountains of Iran, and Wilsons collaboration with Christopher
Knowles, the autistic, (then) teen-aged poet, whose abstract thought patterns led to such
productions as A Letter To Queen Victoria, and perhaps Wilsons best known work in America,
Einstein on the Beach, the landmark opera on which he collaborated with composer Philip Glass.
ABSOLUTE WILSON also examines the embittered story of Wilsons multi-national epic project the
CIVIL warS, originally commissioned for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Although portions of
the CIVIL warS had been performed in various cities at various times, Wilson never saw the
entire piece come together in Los Angeles as he originally conceived it, owing to the last-minute
withdrawal of funds by the Olympic Committee.

Otto-Bernsteins portrait offers a rare and insightful glimpse into the man behind the
genius: in equal amounts exhilarating, shocking, transformative, and ultimately, very human, it
may be Wilsons most enduring impression on us all.

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 Q&A WITH DIRECTOR KATHARINA OTTO-BERNSTEIN

What did you know about Robert Wilson before you started making this film?
I grew up in Germany, where Wilsons work is far more popular. In Europe he is known as a
very versatile and omnipresent artist, a sort of rock star of the performing arts he pushes the
limits and has a tremendous influence on contemporary art. Initially, I had seen the Rock-
Musicals: The Black Rider, his successful collaboration with Tom Waits and William Burroughs,
and Alice and Time Rocker, which he did with Lou Reed. I thought they were absolutely
spectacular and I was very moved by them. There is this saying, that once you have seen one
Wilson show, whether you liked it or not, you will never forget it, and that is absolutely true. On
the other hand, I knew nothing about him or his life, but then no one really did -- he is
notoriously walled off and doesnt like to give interviews.

Why did you decide to make a film about Wilson?

I was researching a project on artists and their muses, when Wilson literally walked into my
life at a cocktail party. We had a vodka together and began talking about art, about what I was
doing, about what he was doing. And at the end of the conversation he said, Why dont we do
something together? Of course Wilson has the most unusual muses -- a deaf-mute child and
an autistic child -- so that fed clearly into my subject matter and I was delighted. Two days later
I wrote him a long letter about how excited I was to be working with him and how meaningful I
found his work to be. He replied with a very short note back that said, Thank you, but I make
Art, not Meanings. When do we start shooting? And I thought, This will be a very interesting
collaboration.

Why do you think Wilson, who is renowned for his reticence, opened up to you?
I am often asked this question because many people had been following Wilsons career for
decades and were better qualified than I. I think there were two factors: one was simply our
chemistry -- we share a similar sense of humor, and we are both foreigners, explorers of other
cultures and their history. He is an American who mostly works in Europe; I am a European who
mostly works in the States. Each of us brings a different perspective to the table. The second
factor was, I believe, that I didnt enter this project with much pre-conceived knowledge and
didnt squeeze Bob into a corner with conjecture. The project began as a clean slate. It was an
organic process that evolved over four years and my questions grew out of genuine interest in
his personality, as much as in his art. It was all so unlikely!

What fascinated you the most about him?

Bob was an outsider and came to the theatre as an outsider. He grew up in Waco, Texas, the
homosexual son of the mayor in a segregated America. He hardly spoke until the age of five. He
not only had issues with language, but he was a late walker and had problems with
comprehension. A typical clinical processing disorder. Children who have this disorder are
usually visual learners. Even today, Bob will often, in conversation, explain something to you
with a drawing. So its not surprising that Wilsons staging communicates with stunning,
emotionally resonant images and language is often secondary. He sometimes uses nonsense
language or deconstructed language as a layer of sound, which for some audiences is difficult to
digest. However, if you put that in the context of his work as a therapist and his work with deaf
mute or autistic individuals who can almost be seen as his alter egos, it makes sense. Especially
in his early career, when he worked with the deaf mute Raymond Andrews and the autistic
Christopher Knowles, he was validating artists who possessed different modes of

6
communication and perception. Bob still thinks like that; he is still is drawn to and influenced by
marginalized individuals.

Fortunately, Byrd Hoffman, his sisters ballet teacher in Waco, recognized that Wilson wasnt a
mere stutterer (as his parents thought) but that he suffered from a delay. She told him to slow
down his speech and his motion, and it became easier for him to speak and to comprehend. He
translated this slower pace into his work and ended up calling his theatre group the Byrd
Hoffman School of Byrds, in honor of the woman who helped him overcome his learning
disabilities. Its utterly fascinating how Wilsons distinctive style turns out to be not at all some
kind of self-conscious theatrical gimmick but rather a very organic outgrowth of his personality
and his early development.

Today, Robert Wilson is one of the highest-paid theatre and opera directors in the world. He
works with great regularity at La Scala, the Paris Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. However he
spends all his money on and is constantly fundraising for the Watermill Center, where he brings
together young artists from all over the world including people with handicaps to foster
creativity. To him, his vision is more important than personal comfort and security. I find that
remarkable.

How does one make a film about Robert Wilson?

You need a lot of time, which wasnt clear to me in the beginning. The main criticism of Wilsons
work has always been that its very abstract and inaccessible, full of symbolism and layers. Yet
when I met him, he seemed very open and human. He did not appear to be an intellectual who
enjoyed playing mind games but a man who passionately believed in his vision, a vision that was
visual. It occurred to me that if he didnt draw most of his inspiration from intellectual sources
(of course he was influenced by performance art and visual artists in the 60s), his influences
must be private. So the big task was getting Wilson to reveal himself something he had never
done before. It took four years, but once he decided to open up, like a puzzle, the pieces began
falling into place.

Then there was the question of the audience for this film. There is the perception, among
American audiences, that Wilsons work is quite rarified yet on the other hand, European
audiences are more aware of his achievements in changing the face of contemporary theater. In
fact, Wilson really is one of the few artists who came out of the theatre of experimentation the
60s avant-garde theatre who works successfully in the international theatre arena. Yet, he
still makes references to his roots: he is a very American artist, despite the fact that he is more
renowned in Europe. So I really had to provide a framework for his mindset: the scene in the
New York of the 60s, which was artistically groundbreaking and a reflection of the political and
societal changes which were then occurring. On top of all this, I wanted the story to be
interesting to younger audiences. In the end, I believe the story of Wilsons life and his struggle
is so universal and engaging that this narrative can appeal to all kinds of people.

How was the film constructed?

I believe the New York Times called Wilson the Master of Light and Space, the Magician of the
Theatre. One thing was immediately clear: it would be impossible to replicate the three-
dimensional experience of a theatre performance, and in particular the monumental scale of a
Robert Wilson piece, on film. The other thing that became clear was that neither avant-garde
editing techniques nor abstraction were right for this film; such experiments in the editing room
failed miserably: it literally was a big cryptic mess. Furthermore, since the materials we had to
work with were so varied (stills, 8mm, 16mm, video), we had to take a somewhat classical

7
approach in order to weave all of the footage into a cohesive tapestry. Film is a naturalistic
medium and there had to be clear contrast to Wilsons surrealistic images. Additionally, I felt it
was important to create a film with a strong narrative, in stark contrast to Wilsons
deconstruction of language, because I wanted the audience to gain access to his frame of mind.
Consequently, I placed a lot of emphasis on the early years of his life the developmental phase
which I thought would serve as a key to unlocking an understanding of his later work.

The construction of the film, however, was very Wilsonian. Wilsons favorite shape is the
triangle, so the film was constructed as a triangle: two timelines, past and present, starting far
apart and meeting in the end. In his theatre pieces, Wilson usually does not have intermissions,
he connects the acts (or scenic changes) with an entracte a little piece of vaudeville, he refers
to as knee-play or a joint piece. I took that idea and made the knee plays my present-day
timeline. I divided his life into acts that followed a biographical timeline and after each act I
returned to the present day to chronicle aspects of his current life and show a lot of the
contemporary work. These knee plays are much looser in structure and are cut in contrast to
the more rigid and conservative storytelling in the biographical acts.

What filmmakers have influenced you?

This is always a difficult question, because filmmakers you admire often have such a particular
style that it would be foolish to emulate them: you enjoy their work, but try to find your own
voice. In this case, however, because the film was extremely difficult to make, I took a very close
look at the work of Federico Fellini and Luis Buuel.

Usually I begin a film with the music. I listen to music and wait for the images and the story to
unfold in my head. In the case of Wilson, I couldnt think of any music he works either with
atonal contemporary classics, such as Tania Leone or Luigi Nano, or with monumental 19th-
century masters, like Richard Wagner or Richard Strauss, which I found too heavy. Then I
looked at Wilsons lifestyle this hectic running around and it reminded me of Fellinis Roma or
La Dolce Vita, which was of course cut to the music of Nino Rota. I think our composer, Miriam
Cutler, contributed a wonderful sense of that same musical feeling to this film.

The other dilemma was conveying Wilsons early years growing up in the Bible belt and showing
that influence in his work. There is no one who weaves subtle religious and political symbolism
into the fabric of his narrative as well as Luis Buuel. I took a close look at Tristana, as well as
Viridiana, a critique of Catholicism under the Franco dictatorship; both helped me a lot with the
films construction.

One thread that weaves through film is the conflict between father and son how much
impact did that have on Wilsons career?
When we began filming, Bob always cited his mother as a primary influence on his work; her
elegance, her posture, her remoteness explain a lot of the aesthetics in his theatre. However his
super-human energy this sense of perpetual rebellion was rooted in some other place.
Wilson and his father couldnt have been more different. Diguid Wilson had been the captain of
his high school football team and was a conservative, athletic, all-American lawyer and a leader in
the Waco community; he had very little patience for his artistic, homosexual son and his abstract
theatre. A different person might have grown indifferent to such discord over the years, but
Wilson tried over and over again to interest his father in his work. Their conflict was never
resolved, but when Bob watched Absolute Wilson for the first time and realized that his father
(according to his sister Suzanne) had been proud of him after all, it was a very emotional

8
moment. For Bob, in a strange way, it meant closure on an issue that had been haunting him all
his life. Yet that friction was also the motor and inspiration for a lot of his work.

How did you find the images for the film?

Good question it was a treasure hunt that led us to theatres all across the globe. Even worse,
most theatres film their dress rehearsals on a VHS format. When I requested a tape from the
Metropolitan Opera of Wilsons famous production of Lohengrin, Joe Volpe (the Mets former
general manager) told me that unfortunately they only had a black-and-white VHS tape with a
line through the middle! That was very discouraging. So the search for usable material began in
New York and finally extended to theatres all around the world.

Fortunately, Wilson has rather extensive archives at his Byrd Hoffman Foundation in New York
and granted me complete access, which was very generous and helpful; he had saved not only
production stills, but also personal photos throughout his life. He also leaves deposits in various
institutions for storage. For example, we got a call from the American Repertory Theatre at
Harvard; they said theyd found ten unmarked boxes of Wilson stuff and asked if we wanted it.
We sure did!

In addition, there is this famous warehouse in New Jersey where Wilson stores things and
forgets about them. This is where we found the film cans of his early work, incorrectly marked
and basically forgotten. Consequently, we were able to call Prof. Arnold Aronson, the definitive
voice of avant-garde theatre in the 60s whose latest book on the subject notes that Wilsons
performance of Baby Blood can only be recalled by a few eyewitness accounts and tell him
that we had found the footage of the production if he wanted to see it. He couldnt believe it, so
that was fun.

For the cinma vrit sequences, we traveled a little bit with Wilson; however it was financially
and logistically impossible to keep up with his schedule. So I ended up giving his two assistants
cameras to capture at least a glimpse of his workaholic existence.

Did Wilson interfere in terms of making the kind of film you wanted to make?
He never interfered. He was very generous he put his office at my disposal but never asked to
see the film. At times, I think, he forgot that I was making the film, or what he had actually said.
At the Berlin Film Festival, a journalist came up to him and asked: Mr. Wilson, what is your
favorite part of the movie? He looked completely baffled, turned to me and said: Katharina,
why dont you tell him what I liked most.

9
 ABOUT ROBERT WILSON

The New York Times has described Robert Wilson as the towering figure of avant-garde theatre.
His groundbreaking international theatre works such as Deafman Glance, Einstein on the Beach
and the CIVIL warS and The Black Rider, to name just a few, push the limits of time and space,
forging images of astonishing beauty, nightmarish psychological complexity, stark wit and
haunting emotion. Many have lauded him as a mesmerizing visual genius. Others damn his
productions as indulgent and costly. Incendiary, influential, contradictory, puzzling, otherworldly,
mischievous, unclassifiable - Wilson is absolutely all of these. For the past four decades the
distinguished American director, designer, architect and sculptor has been recognized as one of
the most versatile visionary creators of the international stage, and he has collaborated with
many of the most creative minds in the public consciousness today, including Phillip Glass,
Susan Sontag, David Byrne, Tom Waits, William S. Burroughs and Lou Reed.

SELECTED TIMELINE

1941 Robert Wilson born in Waco, Texas. A lonely child who does not fit in, he overcomes a
childhood speech disability in his teens with the help of dancer, Byrd Hoffman.
1959 Wilson enrolls at the University of Texas, Austin hoping to please his father.
1963 After coming out to his father, moves to New York to study architecture at the Pratt
Institute, Brooklyn. While at school, takes a job doing movement therapy with brain
damaged children.
1965 Choreographs dance event at New York Worlds Fair.
1966 After graduating at the bottom of his class, he returns to Texas and makes a suicide
attempt, overdosing on pills. He is briefly confined in a mental hospital, before deciding
to leave Texas forever.
1968 Founds The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds as an experimental workshop in a loft on
Spring Street in New Yorks SoHo.
Adopts Raymond Andrews, a deaf-mute African-American street kid.
1969 Two major productions premiere in New York: The King of Spain at the Anderson
Theater and The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
1971 Wilson unveils Deafman Glance, a silent opera conceived in collaboration with
Raymond Andrews, which attracts huge attention in Europe.
1972 The seven-day play KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE is performed in Iran.
On his way home, Wilson is arrested for possession of narcotics and held in prison until
an international effort helps to gain his release.
1974 Wilson premiers A Letter to Queen Victoria, a work with texts by the autistic Christopher
Knowles, in Spoleto, Italy at the Teatro Caio Melisso, which was followed by a run at The
Anta Theater on Broadway in early spring 1975.

10
1976 Wilsons landmark work, Einstein on the Beach (a collaboration with composer Philip
Glass) is performed at the Festival dAvignon and at New Yorks Metropolitan Opera
House.
1979 Death Destruction & Detroit opens at Schaubhne in Berlin.
1982 Wilson begins a long-lasting collaboration with celebrated opera singer Jessye Norman
with the Paris production of Great Day in the Morning.
1983 Parts of the multi-national epic the CIVIL warS are performed in Rotterdam, followed by
Cologne, Rome and Minneapolis with exhibitions in New York and Chicago. The full epic,
commissioned for the 1984 Olympics, has never been seen in its entirety after the
Olympic Committee halted the funding.
1984 German, Italian, and American sections of the CIVIL warS were staged.
1986 A long association with German playwright Heiner Mller begins with Wilsons 1986
staging of Hamletmachine. Wilson is nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for the
CIVIL warS.
1991 Wilsons productions of Mozarts The Magic Flute performed in Paris, followed by
Puccinis Madame Butterfly and Wagners Parsifal in Hamburg.
Collaborates with Tom Waits and William Burroughs on the highly successful production
The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets, which plays to sold-out crowds and
wins the German Theater Critics Award.
1993 Wins Golden Lion prize at Venice Biennale for the sculptural installation Memory/Loss.
Alice in Bed, a collaboration with Susan Sontag, performed in Berlin.
1995 HAMLET, a monologue, devised and performed by Wilson, opens in Houston and begins
a world tour.
1996 Wilson collaborates with rock legend Lou Reed on Time Rocker, which opens at
Hamburgs Thalia Theater.
1998 Monsters of Grace, another work with Philip Glass, premieres in Los Angeles.

2000 POEtry, a second collaboration with Lou Reed, opens in Hamburg. Wilson is invited to join
the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Collaborates again with Tom Waits on Woyzek, which tours internationally.
Designs installations for Giorgio Armani at the Guggenheim Museum, New York and for
Isamu Noguchi: Sculptural Design at Design Museum.

2006 Wilson opens Wagners Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera, Peer Gynt at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music. Opens The Black Rider in Los Angeles. Official opening of the
Watermill Center in Long Island. Celebration of 30 years since Einstein on the Beach.
Wilson turns 65 on October 4th.

11
 ABOUT THE FILMMAKER

KATHARINA OTTO-BERNSTEIN

In 1999 Otto-Bernstein was cornered by Robert Wilson at a cocktail party, when he asked her for
a shot of vodka. The chance meeting evolved into a three-hour conversation, that in turn evolved
into the five-year production of ABSOLUTE WILSON. The first interview the nine months
pregnant Otto-Bernstein conducted a year later led to Wilson driving the filmmaker to the
hospital, where she delivered her first child. The shooting resumed six months later, when Otto-
Bernstein, pregnant again, followed Wilson on tour. A strong, close friendship was forged
between the two directors that let the elusive avant-garde artist to open his heart and his
archives in an unprecedented way. The greatest challenge presented itself in capturing Wilsons
unique aesthetic on camera and tracing his artistic evolution back to the 60s and 70s; the most
creative period in American history. Extensive research was conducted to retrieve footage of early
Wilson productions, correspondence and documents, from all over the world to be interweaved
with current rehearsals and stagings. As the wealth of visual and interview material could not be
contained in one film project, Prestel Publishing will release the interviews and still materials in
the forthcoming biography Absolute Wilson, The Biography which Otto-Bernstein wrote.

Otto-Bernstein has worked in New York, as an independent filmmaker for the past 15
years. Her production company Film Manufacturers Inc. has produced numerous internationally
distributed productions. Born in Hamburg, she was raised in Great Britain and the United States.
The philosophy and political science major received her Bachelors Degree from Columbia
University and immediately went to work for commercial producer/director Klaus Luka.

She then joined the MFA program at Columbia University Film School, where she studied
under such inspirational filmmakers as Emir Kusturica, Martin Scorsese and Michael Hausman.
While still a student, she followed British filmmaker Don Boyd (Aria, War Requiem, 21), to Berlin,
to assist him in the making of the East/West thriller The Berlin Project. The fall of the Berlin Wall
and the change of the political arena put an end to the production; however, it enabled Otto-
Bernstein to direct the television documentary Coming Home, dealing with the re-unification of
German families after 40 years of separation.

Upon her return to New York, Otto-Bernstein collaborated on various documentaries with
documentary filmmaker Raimund Kusserow (When Night Falls Over Moscow, Industrialists Hall
of Fame). As most filmmakers are drawn to the Bible at one point in their career, Otto-Bernstein
decided to address the subject right away in her thesis film The Second Greatest Story Ever Told.
The irreverent view of the immaculate conception, this time in Brooklyn, 1960 AD, starred
Academy-Award winning actress Mira Sorvino as the Virgin Mary and cinemas bad boy Malcolm
McDowell as the Angel Gabriel.

The successful showing of the film garnered her the next project, the cult documentary
The Need for Speed. Profiling one of New Yorks favorite sub-cultures, the hard core bicycle
messenger, the film was shot and directed out of a small two-seater convertible and from a
specially rigged bicycle, to keep up with the speed of the messengers. The featured messengers
in The Need for Speed soon accumulated an impressive international fan following, with tourists
from all over the world seeking out their office.

12
 Coming across a Concran Research study, which reported that 65% of teenagers
worldwide chose modeling as their dream career inspired Otto-Bernsteins next project, the
documentary feature Beautopia. Putting herself in the shoes of an investigative reporter, she
went on the road to find out what the modeling business was really like. The result was a portrait
of four teenage models, filmed around the world, all banking on the promises of their agents and
having their hopes shattered by a merciless industry. Filmed in the Czech Republic, Germany,
Milan, Paris and New York, Beautopia premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to
gather worldwide festival recognition. Beautopia was released theatrically in 1999 and is
internationally distributed by Winstar.

FILMOGRAPHY:

2006 Absolute Wilson

Writer/ Producer/ Director
Documentary Feature, 105 min. 35mm.

1996/98 Beautopia, The Dark Side Of Modeling

Writer/Director/Producer
Documentary Feature, 95 min. 16mm.
Hugo Award, Chicago Film Festival
Official Documentary Selection, Sundance Film Festival 1998

1994/95 The Need for Speed

Writer/Director/Co-Producer Documentary, 60 min. 16mm

1993 The Second Greatest Story Ever Told

Director/Producer
Comedy, 45 min. 16mm
Featuring: Mira Sorvino, Malcolm McDowell, Anne Byrne,

1992 Coming Home

Writer/Director

PRINT

2006 Absolute Wilson The Biography

Prestel Publications New York, London, Munich

13
 THE BYRD HOFFMAN WATER MILL FOUNDATION

The Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation, which operates the Watermill Center, seeks to develop
new approaches to the arts; to provide young people with opportunities for artistic growth; and
to document the work of its Artistic Director, Robert Wilson, and his contemporaries. In addition
to the Watermill Center, the foundation manages the Robert Wilson Archive and the Watermill
Collection.

THE WATERMILL CENTER

The Watermill Center is located on a wooded six-acre site in the Hamptons, Long Island, two
hours from New York City. The site includes a former Western Union factory building, where the
fax machine was first invented. Wilson has designed and developed the facility at Watermill
gradually since he acquired the property in 1992. Many aspects of the master plan were
realized in collaboration with participants of the Summer Program. Both the building and the
landscaped Watermill Center grounds are characterized by the careful arrangement and
integration of natural and man-made components. These features bear the imprint of Wilson's
aesthetic ideals and shape the atmosphere of the site.

The Watermill Center serves both the local and international communities. The center
hosts the Watermill Collection and operates as a study center for Asian and Tribal arts, focusing
on aesthetic and formal themes in world art. In addition, the Watermill Center is home to the
Robert Wilson Archive, a collection of papers, films and artifacts documenting the activities of
Wilson and his collaborators.

FESTIVAL PLAY

2006 Berlin International Film Festival

2006 Sydney Film Festival
2006 Art Basel - Art Film of the Year
2006 Jerusalem International Film Festival
2006 Cambridge International Film Festival
2006 Melbourne International Film Festival
2006 Montreal International Film Festival
2006 Vancouver International Film Festival
2006 Warsaw International Film Festival
2006 Pan Eurasian Film Festival - Antalia, Turkey
2006 Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival

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