Berlin Portraits: Christoph Dreher

I was rushing around Berlin filming interviews for Australian filmmaker Richard Lowenstein for his documentary about Rowland S. Howard. I was very curious about meeting with Christoph Dreher. I had heard so much about him. When The Birthday Party first came to Berlin they stayed with Christoph Dreher. When I met Christoph I was having difficulty because I had to film with two cameras without any help or assistance. I was all thumbs and a bit awkward, but Christoph graciously put up with it all and told some great stories about Nick Cave, Rowland S. Howard, Mick Harvey and the Birthday Party band members who had stayed in his loft. Christoph was there from the beginning in Berlin involved with music and film. He was one of the first revolutionary music pioneers in Berlin when he founded the post-punk band Die Haut in 1980. Die Haut was primarily an amazing instrumental band with sometime guest singers such as Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave, Debbie Harry, Oliver Schütz etc. The first line up of the band consisted of Thomas Wydler, Martin Peter, Remo Park and Christoph. He had studied film-making and started making music videos for his band Die Haut and then went on to make music videos for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for songs such as "Tupelo", "The Singer" and "Mercy Seat“. He then went on to make numerous music documentaries as director and writer and won lots or awards such as the Grimme Preis. He made a lot of incredible music documenteries for German TV ZDF such as "POP ODYSSEE 2 - HOUSE OF THE RISING PUNK" covering the New York punk scene and the 18 part series "LOST IN MUSIC" for ZDF/arte/3sat. Please click on Christoph´s highlighted name to see his extensive bio and all other highlighted names for further information. Since 2000, Christoph is a well respected professor teaching audiovisual media at Merz Akademie for Design in Stuttgart and he still continues to make film