#rainer voss

[bookwormlily]

Master of the Universe (2013)

[mind-blowing-talks]

Master of the Universe (2013)

[tapis-rouge-blog]

EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS : EUROPEAN DOCUMENTARY 2014, MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE

Directed by : Marc Bauder

With : Rainer Voss, Angela Merkel

[garbagetrain]

Master of the Universe

In a skyscraper left vacant for six years after the merging of two giant financial institutions made it redundant, former investment banker Rainer Voss lays bare his experience of our most recent worldwide economic crisis and offers up his portents of doom for the future of global finance. Middle-aged and with a well-worn face that still manages to be both ruddy and bright-eyed, Voss meanders through insights both professional and personal, recounting how as a junior executive he became obsessed with the ever increasing rapidity with which one could make mind-bogglingly huge piles of money by moving it from one place to another from instant to instant. Master of the Universe serves as a sort of somber other side to the same coin that films like Wall Street and The Wolf Of Wall Street manage to make so glamorous... [Continue reading @ Tiny Mix Tapes]

[roomtoreview]

Open City Docs Fest 2014

Aside from Mr. Suarez, bankers are the easiest target in the media right now and there's few things more news-friendly than an easy scapegoat, but Master Of The Universe flips the tables, giving the view on the worldwide economy from the other side. It isn't about money either. Rainer Voss isn't the hyper-stylized, blockbuster figure of Jordan Belfort, he's the genuine article.

Voss, a former investment banker, ambles through a block of empty offices in Hamburg, musing on the pitfalls of human nature that result in interconnected corruption. As bleak state-of-the-union addresses go, the proclamations from Voss are as revolutionary as they remarkably obvious. Of course banks aren't sentient, they're collections of people, making all the mistakes that people make.

Voss' dialogue, edited down from three years' worth of in-depth interviews with director Marc Bauder, is often littered with inaccessible Wall Street jargon, but it's also the necessary marriage of intelligence, experience, cynicism and imagery to bring the inner-workings of an industry swallowed by thoughtless greed to a wider audience.

I went from a tale of bankers fighting to control the world, to the story of teenagers fighting just to exist in it. The closing gala screening was Children 404, a documentary following the lives of LGBT teenagers in Russia, and their struggle in the face of institutionalised discrimination from the Russian government. Featuring anonymous, voice-over testimonies from Russian teenagers and on-camera appearances from a brave few, Children 404 is another chronicling of our times, and with its DIY aesthetic, is so empathetic that many of the audience, and myself, were moved to tears.

The existence of this film alone is a feat to be commended, as directors Loparev & Kurov incorporate handheld footage and talking-head interviews to show real-life characters, speaking with a world-weary wisdom they should never have needed. Watching Pasha, a Russian teen with acerbic, dry humour, who dreams of travelling and becoming a journalist, singing the Canadian national anthem to the Lenin Memorial leaves an indelible imprint.

Children 404 is currently still the subject of investigation by the Russian government, despite its main interviewee being cleared of all charges. If Masters Of The Universe breaks into the mainstream, it could change the way we look at banking culture. They're only two examples of real-life effects of films, and the Open City Docs Fest was full of incredibly affecting films, and a gala screening on your birthday is always nice too.

Written by Peter deGraft-Johnson

Originally posted here, at IdeasTap.

[barthendrikx-blog]

„Eine spannende Entmystifizierung der Finanzwelt.“ 

„A fascinating insight into the banking business.“ In the "Master of the Universe" (2013), German Director Marc Bauder interviews former Frankfurt based top level Investment Banker Rainer Voss.(Welt.de) Voss was one of the Top-Investment Bankers in Germany. He made a million profit per day. Voss opens up about the finance business and the role he played in it and gives an unique and disheartening glimpse into a disconnected system. The background is a frightening inside in a megalomaniacal, quasi-religious parallel world behind mirrored windows. Voss also states that the current economic situation in Europe is unlikely to change course or operate transparently. Full doc here. Trailer above. For DVD, International distribution or sales contact here (German spoken - Dutch subtitles)