REINER MORITZ & POORHOUSE INTERNATIONAL

Reiner Moritz has established himself as a leading international co-producer of music and arts programmes, a reputation built on credits including David Attenborough's Life on Earth, Margot Fonteyn's The Magic of Dance, the epic chronicle of pop music All You Need is Love, Robert Hughes' The Shock of the New, a series of fifteen Balanchine ballets danced by The New York City Ballet, the television adaptation of The Royal Shakespeare Company's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, The Voyages of Charles Darwin, 100 Great Paintings, Africa with Basil Davidson, the special screen adaptation of Peter Brook's Mahabharata, and the British Academy of Film and Television Award-winning series Leaving Home: Orchestral Music in the Twentieth Century. Lately he has been instrumental in putting together a recording of the Chinese classic Peony Pavilion and Peter Stein’s much acclaimed complete Faust.

Moritz is now working with his London based distribution company Poorhouse International Ltd, established in 2003. He presently focuses on major music documentaries and represents selected producers such as LGM, Les Films d’ici, Mark Kidel’s Calliope Media, Camera Lucida Productions, Telmondis, CLC and Opus Arte. Major new projects included a Tchaikovsky Cycle with Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra ; Siddharta , a new full length ballet by Preljocaj; Dancing with the Stars; a new Patrice Bart version of Coppélia; new productions of Eugene Onegin in Amsterdam, La Bohème in Oslo and Le Rendez-vous from the Ballet of the Paris Opera. After the success of Music in the Air he has been commissioned for 2013 a documentary entitled Dance on Screen dealing with the interaction of Film, Television and Dance.

His credits as director include portraits with conductors Zubin Mehta, Karl Böhm and Wolfgang Sawallisch and with artists Giorgio de Chirico and Pierre Soulages. He produced and directed a collection of short documentaries on the Masters of German Art and his highly successful on-going art series, Masterworks, now includes 19O ten-minute films on paintings that are on display in some of the world's finest galleries. Moritz's one-hour documentaries focusing on Five German Realists: Art in the German Democratic Republic gained critical praise when shown on German television shortly after the Berlin Wall came down, and his 35mm film on the great German artist Otto Dix won the Special Jury Prize at 1989 Paris Art Film Festival. Music programmes he has directed include Caruso for All, a history of the gramophone; Anne Sophie Mutter: My Life With Beethoven, and profiles of the pianist and wolf conservationist Hélène Grimaud and of the great Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter as well as documentaries on Handel and Gluck and the Kuhmo Story, an account of the most successful Chamber Music Festival in the world, a profile of the conductor Rafael Kubelik in coproduction with BR, SF DRS and CTV, a profile of Finnish bass Matti Salminen, and the first comprehensive documentary on French baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, The Real Rameau, for FR3. For the 30th anniversary of Les Arts Florissants Moritz was commissioned by FR2 to make a programme about the ensemble.
In the last years he has written and directed a number of documentaries as follows:
Baroque that Rocks, 2003, For better for Worse – Anatomy of a String Quartet, 2004, The Real Rameau, 2004, Floating on the Ground, 2005, Parsifal´s Progress, 2005, The Tragedy of Katerina Ismailova, 2006, Balanchine Forever, 2007, How to Fall in Love with Three Oranges, 2007, La Clemenza di Tito – A Masterpiece revisited, 2007, Do I hear the Light?, 2008, Tannhäuser the Revolutionary, 2009, The Mystery of Coppélia, 2010, Music in the Air, 2011, Happiness that might have been – Eugene Onegin, 2011, Colin Davis – The Man and his Music, 2012, Jiří Bělohlávek – A Musicians’ Musician, 2012.

Droemer Knaur has published Reiner Moritz's own 863-page music dictionary.

In May 1989, the French Ministry of Culture bestowed the honour of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres on Reiner Moritz, and in October 1995 on the occasion of the celebrations at MIPCOM of the 25th anniversary of RM Arts and Music, he was elevated to the rank of Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In January 199O, the Museum of Broadcasting in New York paid tribute to his work, presenting a season of the arts programmes he has produced. Over one hundred hours of RM Arts programming are now part of the Museum's permanent collection.
In March 1992, the Montreal Festival of Films on Art featured a special retrospective of Reiner Moritz films, and in June 1992 he was honoured by The Banff Festival with their Outstanding Achievement Award. In October 1993 RM Arts was awarded the Grand Prix Caméra at the Festival International de l'Emission Scientifique de Télévision, organised by CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), in recognition of the quality and creativity of its productions and company's outstanding contribution to the field of cultural television. The prestigious French television festival FIPA mounted a major retrospective of Reiner Moritz films in January 1997 in Biarritz. Recently the President of Finland bestowed the honour of a Knight of the Order of the Lion of Finland First Class on Moritz.

He was also asked to join the Drama Jury at the Monte Carlo Television Festival 2OO8 and became for the second time chairman of the Golden Prague Jury in the same year. In the years 2009 to 2012 he presented an evening of homage for Robbins, Cunningham, Ailey and Petit at the Golden Prague Festival. In 2013 he will again join the Golden Prague Festival Jury in celebration of its 50th Anniversary and present an evening in homage to Maurice Béjart.

Other current projects include MES AYNAK, STEVE SCHAPIRO, and BENJAMIN BRITTEN – PEACE & CONFLICT.

The UK office is managed by Heike Connolly.

Poorhouse International Ltd.
38 Montreal Road
Brighton BN2 9UY
Tel. +44 (0)7745 205179
info@poorhouseintl.co.uk