THE FILMMAKERS: Peter Laufer

  The filmmakers have a long history as journalists in all media.

  Peter Laufer, is an award-winning journalist with deep experience covering Germany and Germans dating back to the early 1980s when he was fortunate to be the recipient of a John J. McCloy Fellowship and spent a month touring the country and beginning a long relationship with members of the post-War

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generation of Germany. Laufer returned on several news-gathering trips during the years he worked as roving international Correspondent for NBC News, finally moving to Berlin in 1988 when he was awarded a Robert Bosch Foundation fellowship. Laufer learned the language that year and made several journalistic trips into the former East Germany. Just after the fellowship year ended, the Wall fell. Laufer covered those events for CBS News and published a book about his experiences, Iron Curtain Rising (San Francisco, Mercury House, 1991). "I could actually feel, see, hear, and, yes, smell the revolution as I read Iron Curtain Rising," wrote Jim Farley of ABC News about the book.

  The San Francisco Examiner's David Armstrong called it, "A beautifully crafted fusion of political reportage, personal memoir, and travel writing that bristles with insight." Laufer returned to Germany in the mid-1990s to serve as founding Program Director of the Berlin radio station, NewsTalk, the first of its kind in Germany. During this period he was also Germany Bureau Chief for the U.S. public radio program Marketplace.