Peter Kullmann

Peter Kullmann (born 3 October 1962 in Mainz) is a German journalist, photographer, cameraman and filmmaker. He lives and works in Mainz and Vienna.
== Life ==
Kullmann is a trained advertising photographer, but he turned to press photography with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In 1990, he became co-owner of the Hamburg photo agency Zone5 photography and photographed for the news agency Reuters Newspictures. Since 1992 he has been travelling to war and crisis zones all over the world. From 1996 to 2001, he had a permanent residence in Nairobi, Kenya, as an operational base for his Africa reporting.Liz Wieskerstrauch: Ich war geschockt, als ich meine Bilder sah. In: Kunst & Kultur. Nr. 4, Mai 1996, S. 5–9.
From 2001 on he worked from his new location in Vienna as a cameraman and reporter for various German and Austrian television stations. In 2003, Kullmann und Berger Filmproduktion was formed, from which the film company Kubefilm GmbH (Vienna) emerged in 2009, for which he is still active today as a partner and managing director.Peter Kullmann – Kubefilm. The Kubefilm Website. Retrieved: 18 Mai 2020.
== Career ==
=== 1989–2000 ===
Kullmann was on a motorcycle expedition through the Middle East and North Africa lasting several months when he learned of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 11 November 1989 in a desert oasis in Egypt. He decided to break off his journey, which should have taken him to India, in order to return to Germany and accompany the socio political developments in the wake of this event as a press photographer. In Hamburg, he joined the photo agency Zone5 photography, which at the time was managing the photo journal service of the Hamburg office of the Reuters news agency (Reuters newspictures). In addition to news photography, he worked on his first photo reportages, which were published in various special interest magazines and magazine supplements of major daily newspapers. Subsequently, his photos were published by Gruner + Jahr|Gruner+Jahr in the prestigious natural history and reportage magazines GEO (magazine)|GEO and GEO Special.
Under the impression of the dramatic news images from the war in Yugoslavia, Kullmann volunteered to work as a war photographer on the Balkans. On his first assignment there, he substituted Reuters photographer Corinne Dufka in the besieged city Sarajevo. During this time Kullmann's writing colleague and (war) journalistic mentor was Reuters correspondent Kurt Schork. Subsequently Kullmann photographed for the newly founded German news magazine Focus (German magazine)|Focus in winter 1992/1993, later also covering the Bosnian War for Der Spiegel, and The New York Times. During and after his Reuters assignment, Kullmann worked on several occasions with Pulitzer Prize winner John F. Burns on reports for the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, covering, among other things, Serbian snipers in command posts around Sarajevo or the former Olympic village Dobrinja, which had been cut off from the outside world for months. 
He also witnessed the two so-called Markale massacres in Sarajevo, as well as the of Serbian troops and a large part of the Serbian population from the Grbavica and other Sarajevo districts after the Dayton Agreement.Liz Wieskerstrauch In: Kunst & Kultur. Vol. 4, Mai 1996, p. 5–9.
Parallel to his assignments on the Balkans, Kullmann was sent to the Somali city of Belet Huen by the Hamburg news magazine Der Spiegel in March 1993 in order to cover the first so-called out-of-area mission of the German Bundeswehr since the Second World War. In the following years, Kullmann travelled several times to the heavily embattled Somali capital Mogadishu. In: Der Spiegel, vol. 33, 1993, p. 3. In: Der Spiegel, vol. 25, 1999, p. 108–110.
Until the year 2000, dozens of missions from war and crisis zones in Rwanda, Congo, Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria and others followed, among others for German and international media.Sniperalley Webiste: Kullmann in Sarajevo/ Bosnia-Herzegovina Website Sniper Alley. Retrieved 18 Mai 2020.
=== 2000–2009 ===
On a trip to the north of the Ivory Coast in 2002, he filmed his escape from the embattled rebel area around the city of Korhogo after the sudden outbreak of Civil war in Ivory Coast|civil war. His video recordings, led to his first TV reportage being produced for the ZDF format ZDF Reporter under the ZDF foreign correspondent Peter Kunz as lead author. Website of the Presseportals. Retrieved 18 Mai 2020. Website of Ican Films. Retrieved 25 Mai 2020.
During the so-called Sahara hostage crisis 2003|Sahara hostage-taking in 2003 Kullmann managed to travel to southern Algeria for the German broadcaster RTL and, with the help of two satellite telephones which he had smuggled into the country, he was the only Western journalist to regularly deliver video news material and reporter standups for the RTL Nachrichten over a period of about 4 months. In 2004, Kullmann spent several months in Baghdad as an RTL news reporter and produced the report tv documentary Baghdad - No Rest after the Storm for the news channel ntv. In the same year, he reported on the 2004 Sumatra earthquake|Sumatra earthquake from Sri Lanka.
=== Since 2009 ===
Kullmann and his video editor colleague Florian Berger had already been working together for some years under the name Kullmann und Berger Filmproduktion, producing television content for the German, Austrian and international market, especially long-format reports for Spiegel TV on behalf of the Austrian channel ATV. In 2009 they founded the film company Kubefilm GmbH. Since its foundation, Kullmann has been producing non-fictional television content on behalf of various broadcasters, such as long-format reports, documentaries and natural history films, including the multiple award-winning wildlife documentary The Return of the Hoopoe. In 2016, journalist and author Magdalena Maier, whom Kullmann had been working with since 2009, joined Kubefilm as co-owner and managing director.Peter Kullmann – Kubefilm. The Kubefilm Website. Retrieved 18 Mai 2020. Website of 3Sat. Retrieved 27. Mai 2020.
In 2013, Kullmann and Maier travelled to Nigeria to produce a TV documentary about the ongoing violent clashes, which are generally regarded as a religious conflict. Their months-long field work eventually led them into the northern Nigeria Borno state capital of Maiduguri, which is officially off limits to foreign journalists. There they interviewed, amongst others, the lawyer Aisha Wakil, who describes herself as the mother of Boko Haram, an islamist terrorist organization, Kullmann would in the further course of the production also establish personal contact to. After a near-fatal robbery in Maiduguri, the city considered the birthplace of the Boko Haram, the team had to suspend work for several weeks. During subsequent trip to Northern Nigeria, which was marked by great obstacles and dangers, a secret meeting between Kullmann and two members of Boko Haram, one of whom is said to be a senior strategist, took place. The journalistic outcome was an on camera interview lasting several hours, parts of which were published in the ORF documentary Gottes Krieger - Gottes Feinde (ORF 2013, engl. "God's Army - God's Enemy"). Website of ORF. Retrieved 18 Mai 2020. Website of derStandard. Retrieved 18 Mai 2020. Website of ORF. Retrieved 18. Mai 2020. Website of ARD. Retrieved 18 Mai 2020. Doris Priesching Website of derStandard. Retrieved 18 Mai 2020.
For several years, Kullmann has also been active in the field of Corporate Global, developing storytelling concepts and projects for companies like OMV|OMV AG, Daimler AG, Swarovski Optik or Agrana. This work led to the founding of the communications agency dotcom.media (dotcom media global communications GmbH), which develops and implements communication strategies, storytelling concepts and, paid and owned content formats for various companies and organisations.dotcom.media. Website of dotcom Media. Retrieved 27 Mai 2020.
==Selected filmography==
* 2004: Keine Ruhe nach dem Sturm
* 2009: Gezeichnet fürs Leben
* 2011: Vergeben und Vergessen?
* 2012: Der Tod ist mein Leben
* 2012: Die Rückkehr des Wiedehopfs
* 2013: Freiheit in Gedanken
* 2013: Gottes Krieger, Gottes Feinde
* 2015: Dokeins: Que será, será?
* 2016: Dokeins: Wahnsinn Fußball
* 2016: Generation Dschihad
* 2016: Im Angesicht des Todes
== References ==
== External links ==
* 
* Niemanreports – Kullmann im Auftrag von Reuters
* Sniperalley – Kullmann in Sarajevo/ Bosnien Herzegowina
Category:1962 births
Category:German photographers
Category:German journalists
Category:German cinematographers
Category:German filmmakers