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Wolfgang Büld, born in Lüdenscheid on September 4, 1952, originally wanted to become a crime writer but found it difficult to find the right words and decided that the medium film would be better suited for him. Büld was accepted at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF) in 1974. He graduated in 1977 with the music documentary "Punk in London", for which he filmed bands like The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers, The Kill Joys and Rough Trade. The film went on to become a cult film in the international punk scene.
Although Büld studied and worked in Munich, he did not feel close to the representatives of the New German Film such as Fassbinder, Wenders and Kluge. In an interview he said: "I knew almost all the people and was peripheral to the scene. I didn't like the films and it had nothing to do with the films I had in mind. One exception was my friend Klaus Lemke with "Rocker", and Wenders had some nice pictures, and that was it. It is a cinema that has always remained strange to me". Apart from Lemke, Büld was especially attached to Eckhart Schmidt: "I got along very well with Eckhart on a theoretical basis, we were good friends and wrote the Munich Manifesto together, which no one else signed. Even Klaus Lemke refused. In the Manifesto we demanded a practical ban on all representatives of the "New German Film".
Wolfgang Büld's first feature-length work was the TV movie "Brennende Langeweile" ("Bored Teenagers", 1978) about the gradually flourishing German punk scene. The band The Adverts, which was touring Germany at the time, participated in the film. He then made two documentaries about the aftermath of the British punk music scene: "British Rock - Ready For The 80's" (1980, TV), about bands like The Police and Boomtown Rats, and "Women in Rock" (1980, TV), about bands and musicians like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nina Hagen and The Slits.
In the following years Büld oscillated between independent and mainstream projects, that almost always had to do with the music scene. For the episode film "Neonstadt" (1981), in which Dominik Graf also participated, Büld made the segment "Disco Satanica", about a rampage in a Schwabing disco. The New German Wave film "Gib Gas - Ich will Spaß" ("Hangin’ Out", 1983), starring the pop stars Nena and Markus, received a lot of attention. He was the director of the video clip for the song "Eisgekühlter Bommerlunder" (1983) by the punk rock band Die Toten Hosen and directed "Der Formel Eins Film" ("Feel the Motion", 1985) with Ingolf Lück, a feature film for the then popular youth music program "Formel Eins".
For TV he created the ten-part series "Rockpower Television" (1986), a British-German co-production about two competing British music channels. Büld also wrote the scripts for the comedy "Laß das - ich haß' das" (1983), the erotic film "Schulmädchen '84" (1984) and the crime thriller "Orchideen des Wahnsinns" (1985), the latter two directed by Nikolai Müllerschön.
In between, Büld realized two more personal projects: the idiosyncratic music documentary "JAPlan" (1984), for which he accompanied the German electronic band Der Plan on their tour of Japan, and "Berlin Now" (1985) about the West Berlin underground music scene of the 1980s - this film is best known for its rare and intense concert footage of Einstürzende Neubauten.
Wolfgang Büld had his two greatest commercial successes in the early 1990s: the comedy "Manta, Manta" (1991) with Til Schweiger, which emerged from the wave of jokes about Opel Manta drivers at the time, and "Das war der wilde Osten" (1992, together with Reinhard Klooss), a sequel to the comedy hit "Go Trabi Go". A more personal project was the documentary "I'll Never Get out of this World Alive" (1992), about country legend Hank Williams, who died at an early age.
With "Und tschüss!" (1995), about the experiences of a chaotic Ruhr valley clique (starring Benno Fürmann and Gesine Cukrowski, among others), Büld wrote and directed a very successful television series, which inspired three feature films (directed by other directors). Less popular, however, was the comedy "Der Trip" (1995), a parody of the hippie era with pop singer Dieter Thomas Kuhn in the leading role. Büld in an interview: "A project where the chemistry with the producer was not right at all, and where thirteen books were written in three months, which became worse and worse. The shooting was hell. Everyone who was involved was aware of the drama". Although he describes "Der Trip" as his last mainstream directorial work, it was followed in 1999 by the TV comedy "Voll auf der Kippe" (1999), about a fanatical anti-smoker (Mike Krüger) who falls in love with a smoker (Katharina Schubert) and at the same time gets in the way of a cigarette smuggler (Rolf Zacher). As an author, Büld wrote screenplays for series such as "Wolffss Revier" (1995) and "Mordkommission" (1999), as well as for numerous episodes of "Küstenwache" ("Coast Guard", 1997-2003) and "Ein Fall für zwei" ("A Case for Two", 1990-2007).
Between 1997 and 2006 he only realized four independently produced films. For the crime comedy "Drop Out" (1997), about a Hamburg private detective who's new to his job. The film was co-directed by the leading actress and co-author Beatrice Manowski ("Nekromantik"), who remains uncredited. In London, the trash horror film "Penetration Angst" (2003) was shot on DV. It is about a woman (Fiona Horsey) with the ability to completely devour her sexual partners with her vagina.
Also in London and again starring Fiona Horsey, Büld made two other exploitation films: the horror thriller "Lovesick: Sicklove" (2004), about the girlfriend of a rock musician who gets involved with a perverse hotel owner out of financial difficulties, and the thriller "Twisted Sisters" (2006), about a woman from a precarious background who wants to take over the identity of her wealthy twin sister.
After that, it became quiet around Wolfgang Büld for many years. Dominik Graf honored his work in the documentaries "Verfluchte Liebe Deutscher Film" ("Doomed Love: A Journey Through German Genre Films", 2016) and "Offene Wunde Deutscher Film" (2017). Only in 2017 Büld made another film again, the British thriller "Dirty White Lies", with Fiona Horsey in the leading role of a woman who gets into danger with her husband during a sailing trip. In Germany, "Dirty White Lies" was shown at the Weekend of Fear Festival in Nuremberg in 2018.