Hugo Niebeling

Hugo Niebeling (2 February 1931 – 9 July 2016) was a German film director and producer. He had been particularly noted for his work on industrial and music films, and is considered one of the most important renewers of these genres in Germany. His style is credited to have influenced and helped create the modern music video. His feature-film documentary Alvorada was nominated for an Academy Award in 1963. Hugo Niebeling was born and raised in Düsseldorf. As a child, he was evacuated to the countryside during World War II. Once the war ended and he returned home, he found his parents' music store destroyed by bombs. Niebeling developed an interest in modern art, classical music and theatre, but was unable to study acting for financial reasons, and therefore enrolled in a business degree at the Mannesmann-AG in Düsseldorf. Parallel to that, he studied acting privately with Otto Ströhlin, an actor at the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus who had many pupils. Niebeling's role model was Gustaf Gründgens, a famous theatre actor. After working as a theatre actor for a while in Augsburg, Niebeling turned to directing. As a teenager, he had already expressed his thoughts about his definition of art – which he has kept unchanged since: My definition of art? It's mostly condensed life (...), cast into a mould. Art, born out of the conflict of emotions, cleared by reason, released into the mould, mirroring the whole in a limited form. 'Released' into the mould because the creative process is a painful one. In 1957, Niebeling directed his first film Stählerne Adern, a documentary about steel-production at Mannesmann AG, inspired by the German experimental director Walter Ruttmann. This film won many accolades and led to Niebeling directing numerous much-acclaimed industrial and experimental films during the early 1960s. They combine stylized cinematography and editing with experimental scores, often in collaboration with Oskar Sala. His short film Stahl - Thema mit Variationen is a good example, being an audiovisual poem on steel-production, using only sound and image to explain its subject without any voice-over or other narration.