Iľja Ruppeldt (Slovakia)

Slovak film director and screenwriter. In 1983 he graduated in Film and TV Documentary Production from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. At the Short Film Studios in Bratislava he made documentary films – Cultural Agricultural Country (1987), The Hellas (1988), and Monologue with Science (1988). In 1990, he made the feature documentary about the situation in Czechoslovakia from the autumn of 1989 until the summer of 1990, written by Fedor Gál, entitled Flight Report OK 89-90. He worked as chief producer of the Documentary Film Production and Education Centre at the Slovak Television (1992-94) and as the creative director Euro RSCG advertising agency (1994-97). In the late 1990s he moved to New Zealand, he taught at the Media Department of the Hamilton University there (1997-99) and in 1999 he founded the production company Golem Productions. He works in the production of promotion, instruction, and advertising films. In 2004 he made a documentary film entitled A Meeting with the Thistle. As a documentary filmmaker for television, he made interviews with pope John Paul II, Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, the mountaineer and explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, Czech prime minister Miloš Zeman and others.