Uli Hanisch

Hanisch’s extensive archival collection, taken over in 2005, increases with every new production. It elucidates his specific working approaches while also providing information about the professional transformations taking place in the field of production design during the past twenty years. Hanisch’s projects with Leander Haußmann (‘Hotel Lux’, 2011) and Oliver Hirschbiegel (‘Das Experiment’, 2001), as well as his international fantasy and historical productions, are documented through his designs, construction plans and set photos. Hanisch’s long-year collaboration with Tom Tykwer is the centrepiece of the archival collection. Numerous drawings Hanisch made by hand are included for ‘Das Parfum – Die Geschichte eines Mörders’ (2006), although such plans were increasingly produced using digital software during their subsequent joint projects. It is characteristic of Hanisch to avoid using right angles in the ground plan but instead quite “cinematically” lay out the spaces for the camera perspective. Building plans for the nearly true-to-scale replica of New York’s Guggenheim Museum in Tykwer’s ‘The International’ (2009) fill eight binders. Concept art, storyboards, designs and plans for ‘Cloud Atlas’ (2012) illustrate the complex metamorphosis of the sets for the film that fell under the responsibility of two teams of directors(Tom Tykwer, and Lana and Lilly Wachowski). Moodboards show the respective colour concepts. Models, mostly in styrofoam, attest to continued reliance on analogous visualizations. Hanisch’s new building concept for the “Berliner Straße made for ‘Babylon Berlin’” in Babelsberg can be viewed in blueprints and his drawings of the façades. The Deutsche Kinemathek has been cinematically documenting the production of the sets used in the series since 2015. The increasingly international orientation of his work is evidenced by extensive documents such as models, designs, construction drawings and concept art for the series 'The Queen's Gambit' and the prequel 'The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes' (2023, directed by Francis Lawrence). (Text: Kristina Jaspers)