Hans-Joachim Kasprzik

Hans-Joachim Kasprzik (14 August 1928 – 10 October 1997) was a German film and television director and screenwriter. He worked with DEFA and Deutscher Fernsehfunk in East Germany.

Hans-Joachim Kasprzik was born in Beuthen. After the war, he attended a training programrun by the newly created DEFA in the Soviet occupation zone. He then began his career there in the 1950s, first working as an assistant for several important directors, such as Kurt Maetzig, Konrad Wolf, Hans Müller and Kurt Jung-Alsen. He worked under Müller on the 1954 film, Carola Lamberti – Eine vom Zirkus, under Jung-Alsen on Duped Till Doomsday (1957) and under Maetzig on First Spaceship on Venus (1960). His directorial debut was with the television film Gerichtet bei Nacht in 1960, which he also wrote. He also directed television miniseries, often writing the screen adaptations as well, such as with Hans Fallada's Wolf unter Wölfen in 1964. In 1965, the West German magazine Film wrote that Kasprzik could become one of the GDR's best film directors.

In 1966, Kasprzik directed the comedy Hände hoch oder ich schieße ("Hands up, or I shoot") with Rolf Herricht, a film that was banned by the Communists and not released. The film was restored by the DEFA Foundation (German: DEFA Stiftung) and the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in 2009 and was the last in a series of banned films restored and released by the Foundation.

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