Wolfgang Hastert is an award- winning German documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, photographer, and media artist with more than 10 long form documentaries to his credit. His films have all premiered on the French/German channel ARTE, the foremost arts and culture venue on European television, and numerous TV channels world-wide.

Hastert studied fine art photography and filmmaking in both his native Germany and in the United States. He studied in the renowned design department at Fachhochschule Darmstadt and continued his studies on a Fulbright Scholarship at California State University in Fullerton.

Since 1992 he has been running his own production company; shooting and directing documentaries, short films, and producing animations.

Most of his films deal with aspects of American culture. In THE PICTURE MAN he follows the footsteps of photographer Shelby Lee Adams as he documents the legacy of people in Appalachia; in BIG STORIES, a film about dieting, he gives voice to the members of the Fat Acceptance Movement, and in his latest project CLICK ME:), Hastert explores the world of cyber love and the desperate activities of people searching for partners online.

Hastert is also well respected for his films on artists and photographers. His work in this area ranges from films on American painter Edward Hopper, to a portrait of Peruvian illustrator Alberto Vargas, and to fine art photographers, including Paul Outerbridge and James Bidgood, the creator of PINK NARCISSUS. Within the context of the above films he has also portrayed the work of American photographers Joel Meyerowitz, Hans Namuth, and Arnold Newman.

Hastert's documentaries have been described as unusual, honest, brilliant, quirky and bizarre. He is lauded as a filmmaker who honors the dignity of his subjects, while exploring the complexity of the human condition.

Among the festivals where Hastert's documentaries have been shown are: the Festival Question de Genre in France, the Provincetown International Film Festival, the Silverlake Filmfestival in Los Angeles, La Nuit Cinquieme Biennale international du Film sur l'Art at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and Peking, China, the IFP No Borders Festival in New York, and at the Chicago Film Festival, where his film VARGA GIRLS won a Silver Hugo award.

Art Center Frankfurt and the Whitney Museum in New York have also held screenings of his documentaries, and MOPA, the Museum of Photographic Arts, in San Diego held a retrospective of Hastert's work.

Aside from documentary filmmaking, Hastert's interest in the visual image has led to projects in fine art photography, new media and animated shorts.

The animated film "UNDERWEAR STORIES", which he produced, was presented nationwide in the "Spike and Mike Festival of Animation", and earned him a Merit Award from the Art Directors Club in New York.

Recently, his production MR LOU IN LOVE was presented world-wide in R E S F E S T, the foremost international digital media festival, and the international Cracow Filmfestival in Poland. His films RUSSIAN BRIDES and CYBER VIXEN enjoyed screenings at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in San Diego, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, the VideoVixen Festival, and the media arts festival L.A.FREE WAVES in Los Angles.

Wolfgang's fine art photography series SHADOWMAN, a fusion of analogue images with digital cyber portraits of his film subjects will be presented in an upcoming show at PMCA, the Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Hastert lectures in the Radio/TV department at City College San Diego and the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego.

Hastert lives and works with his wife, Blair Thornley, an internationally known illustrator, painter and animator in San Diego, California. Their best collaboration to date is a very "animated" seven-year-old soccer player, named Otto.