Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein (born 1939 in Königs Wusterhausen, Germany) is a German cinematographer. He has collaborated with director Werner Herzog on a number of projects. Among his many collaborations with other directors, Schmidt-Reitwein is notable for his cinematographic achievement in shooting Alan Greenberg's acclaimed 1982 documentary about Jamaica and death of Bob Marley, Land of Look Behind.
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Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein is the son of the painter Karl Schmidt-Reitwein. The first twelve years of his life he has been in Lübeck.
He went to Waldorfschool and afterward he studied Physics for a few semester also in Lübeck. Then he switched on to the Film Industry and went for that in 1959 to Berlin. He did some various practicum in different film management area such as synchron studio, film laboratory, and sound studio. Suddenly his career structure broke up, as he was captured there after building the Berlin wall, on the east communist side, as he tried to help his girlfriend be transported to the west. In such a fast political juristic show-process he was sentenced for 5 years imprisonment as an accused human dealer and a bounty hunter. After spending moore then 3 years in penitentiary, the west-government dealt in a conspirative action for his freedom against 84.000DM worth of butter.
He started his Professional career again from the very beginning. In the first instance as camera assistant in Munich. In 1969 Werner Herzog gave him his greatest chance for the first time by a Doku- Feature Film as Director of Photography. Thereby emerged the most promising film critics for Fata Morgana. Thereafter he worked together 17 more movies and documentary films with Werner Herzog himself. On top of this, he also worked with various well known numbers of directors such as Alexander Kluge, Herbert Achternbusch, Josef Bierbechler, H.C. Blumenberg, Werner Schroeter, Alan Greenberg, Markus Fischer, Douglas Wolfsperger, Andre Heller, etc. He gathered 2 German Film Prize awarded in gold for his light speciality on his films he worked together with Werner Herzog. For his latest feature film he received the 1 st Prize award for his camera work from the Fantasy Film Festival in Malaga (Spain). Schmidt-Reitwein had worked in Ludwigsburg Film Academy and University of the Philippines ( Film Academy in Manila) as a Lecturer.
He also work for TV, shooting many commercials for Nike, Master Card, Swiss Com, Mercedes - Benz.
At present he lives together with his Philippine wife and his 5 years old daughter on his farm house in Bavaria in Ering nearby the Inn - river.