Happy 60th Birthday, Christoph & Wolfgang Lauenstein!

20 March

Twin brothers Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein are two of the most successful stop-motion animators in Germany. During their studies of visual communication – Christoph at the Kunsthochschule in Kassel, Wolfgang at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg – they produced their first short films. By combining classic puppet animation, claymation and computer animation, they created their own distinctive visual style. The brothers also attracted international attention: their seven-minute animated film Balance, for which they developed the idea and wrote the script, and which they directed together in 1990, won many awards. It was the first (and to date, only) German animated film to win an Oscar as Best Animated Short. Balance uses a reduced stop-motion technique to create a metaphor for the fragile balance of human coexistence. The film, made as part of a short film programme that was initiated by pop group Alphaville, can be seen in an endless loop in the House of History of the German Federal Agency for Civic Education in Bonn.

Since then, the brothers’ animated film production company Lauenstein & Lauenstein has developed and produced countless commissioned works for TV and the cinema in addition to advertising spots for international customers, most of which employ the classic stop-motion technique.

Since 2014, Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein have dedicated themselves to writing and directing their own cinema projects, which they produce in collaboration with international computer animation production companies. Their first feature-length animated film Luis und die Aliens (Luis and the Aliens), from 2018, tells the story of a friendship between a boy and three cheeky extraterrestrial beings. A year later, the brothers produced a free adaptation of the “Bremen Town Musicians” fairy tale, Die sagenhaften Vier (Marnie’s World).

Their most recent short films tie in to more profound subjects. Waiting for Harold from 2019 explores the fateful nature of chance; the surreal animated puppet film People in Motion from 2021 is a parable about egotism and community spirit.

Waiting for Harold (2019)

Is life simply a series of coincidences, or does it follow a fated plan? The seven-minute animated film Waiting for Harold deals playfully with this philosophical question. Marie waits in vain for her blind date, Harold, whose bus will be delayed. In a time loop with minimal variations from repetition to repetition, the filmmakers work through the famous idea that the beating of a butterfly’s wings can cause a chain reaction which in turn changes the big picture.