"I do tailor-made pieces"

She always stays in the background - despite the over 100 films in which her influence has been strong. Renée Gundelach has been in the business for 30 years - but that word "business" isn't one she likes to hear. There's another aspect she considers more important: "What I do seems to me very creative. It's as if I were painting a picture." It's a view of things may come as a surprise if one considers her professional talents:

Renée Gundelach is an economist, lecturer, busines consultant, producer, expert, cultural manager, and executive officer. She develops, plans, organizes, and finances feature films; she's studied econometrics, statistics, law, and journalism; she's an executive officer of the Corporation of New German Film Producers, a member of the board of the German Film and Television Academy and the Commission of the Ten, and does a few other things besides.

Altogether a rather dry affair, some people might conclude. Yet looking back at a year like 1988, in which she worked as the executive producer for eight different films, Renée Gundelach reinforces her own view of her work: "The material I'm working with is actually very closely related to the material of film itself. Cost calculation and bookkeeping for a production don't require some rigid, static processing of equations, but imaginative, even creative use of material capacities and all reasonable possibilities of financing and organization." As the co-founder of Basis Film and Road Movies she's been involved in the development of the German "author film" from the very beginning. Asked to reflect on the economic efficiency of some of those early efforts, her responds includes phrases like "economic dilettantism" and "job-related exploitation." The hand-to-mouth lifestyle widespread in those days has since been replaced by new, more professional structures, but even today most of the so-called "creative people" want as little to do with the money side as possible. It's for this reason that the service offered by Renée Gundelach is not only unique in Germany, but also as heavily in demand as it is necessary.