User:Billyboy8

I am a German film poster collector and film ephemera collector from Australia. My collection may be viewed at www.germanfilms.net I published the first English–language book on German film director Karl Ritter (1888-1977) in early 2012. The book is titled  Karl Ritter: His Life and 'Zeitfilms' under National Socialism.'' ISBN # 978-0-9808612-2-8.

I was given exclusive access to Karl Ritter's unpublished wartime diaries and have translated more than 50,000 words from old Sütterlin Handschreibung to English and incorporated the May 1942 to March 1943 period covering the conceptualizing, writing, and then the production of the Luftwaffe propaganda film The Crew of the Dora by Karl Ritter. The book has 90 rare and mostly unseen photographs/charts/map/sketches pertaining to the film's production, as well as  a translation of the Ufa press book and the extremely rare cinema owners promotion guide (Werberatschlag) which were  produced in limited quantities but then destroyed when the film was banned in November 1943; and so  never released to Third Reich audiences. Uniquely, the film was shot on location in both wartime France and the Occupied Soviet Union, as well as in Fascist Italy in 1942. German scenes were filmed in and around Greater Berlin in November–December 1942.

The book :Gillespie, William. The Making of The Crew of the Dora. Potts Point, New South Wales: German Films Dot Net. The book was issued ISBN #978–0–9808612–3–5 and was published on 1 March 2016. The format is a trade paperback, perfect binding, 6 x 9 inches, with 320 pages of text and the above–mentioned illustrations. The book's Table of Contents and further information is available here: http://www.germanfilms.net/making-crew-dora/. Praise for the book can be found here: http://www.germanfilms.net/high-praise-dora-book/.

In June 2018 I discovered the believed lost original Ufa film studio script for the feature film on the Legion Condor by Karl Ritter in a used Berlin bookstore. The 283-page script I translated into English and then wrote about the film's production in Summer 1939 using all of the entries in Ritter's private diaries made available to me by his grandson in Argentina. The result is the 224 page book ″Legion Condor – Karl Ritter's lost 1939 feature film″ with 42 photographs and illustrations, including 4 colour plates. The book is in print and has ISBN #9780980-861266. It has been praised by scholars and film historians for adding to the understanding not only to Third Reich propaganda film studies but also filling a gap in information available to the German films produced in support of Franco Spain in the Spanish Civil War.