Claas Danielsen, born in April 1966 in Hamburg, has worked as a filmmaker,
producer, lecturer, training provider, festival director and CEO of a film
fund and lives in Leipzig/Germany.
Claas made seven documentaries
of which several did an extensive festival tour, won international awards
and were sold to European broadcasters.
In 1997 he became
assistant to the professor in the documentary department of the Munich Film
Academy where he built up a new chair for TV-journalism.
In 1999,
Claas became Head of Studies of Discovery Campus (nowadays Documentary
Campus), one of the leading European documentary training programmes.
From 2004 - 2014 he served as Artistic and Managing Director of DOK
Leipzig, the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated
Film which he developed into one of the leading international doc
festivals.
In 2016, Claas became CEO of the German regional film
fund MDM, the Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung, based in Leipzig. MDM
is a strong supporter of international co-productions.
Claas
Danielsen was board member of the German documentary filmmakers’
association AG DOK, the European Documentary Network EDN and the Balkan
Documentary Center for several years. He is a member of the European
Film Academy, and has served on many international festival juries and the
selection committees of different German film and media funds.