Jan Harlan Explained

Jan Harlan
Birth Date:5 May 1937
Birth Place:Karlsruhe, Germany
Occupation:Film producer, film director
Yearsactive:1971–present
Relatives:Christiane Kubrick (sister)
Veit Harlan (uncle)

Jan Harlan (born 5 May 1937) is a German-American executive producer who worked with his brother-in-law, the director Stanley Kubrick, on his last five films.

Life

Jan Harlan was born in Karlsruhe in 1937, the son of two opera singers, Fritz Moritz Harlan (1901–1970) and his wife Ingeborg (née de Freitas). Jan Harlan is the nephew of the film director Veit Harlan and the younger brother of Christiane Kubrick, who was married with director Stanley Kubrick from 1958 until his death in 1999.

Harlan started out working for Kubrick as a researcher, most prominently on Napoleon,[1] Kubrick's never-filmed epic about the French military leader, in 1968, when Kubrick asked him, as a German speaker, to accompany him to Romania to organise the army scenes for the film.[2] Harlan acted as Kubrick's executive producer for Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and was an assistant to the producer for A Clockwork Orange (1971). Harlan was also executive producer for Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a collaboration between Spielberg and Kubrick. Harlan also directed a feature-length documentary about Kubrick, (2001).[3]

In 2009 he assisted Alison Castle, a Taschen editor, in creating the book Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made[4] and gave a talk about the Kubrick Napoleon archives at Cambridge Film Festival in September 2010 with Alison Castle.[5] He is the nephew of the German filmmaker Veit Harlan, best known for his work during the Third Reich including Jud Süß (1940), an antisemitic propaganda film. Jan Harlan has three sons, Manuel, Dominic and Ben. He is married to Maria.

He has for several years been a regular guest lecturer at the European Film College, and also at the University of Hertfordshire's Film and Television degrees, for which he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in 2011.[6]

In 2016, Harlan joined the film jury for ShortCutz Amsterdam, an annual film festival promoting short films in Amsterdam.[7] [8]

Filmography

Producer

YearTitleDirectorNotes
1971A Clockwork OrangeStanley Kubrick
1975Barry Lyndon
1980The Shining
1987Full Metal Jacket
1999Eyes Wide Shut
2001SelfDocumentary
A.I. Artificial IntelligenceSteven Spielberg
2019Valley of the GodsLech Majewski

Notes and References

  1. News: ?? . Entertainment.timesonline.co.uk . 2015-09-19.
  2. http://arsenals.lv/en/t/harlan-jan
  3. Web site: Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001). IMDb.com. 2015-09-19.
  4. Web site: Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon. TASCHEN Books (Limited Edition) . Taschen.com . 2015-09-19.
  5. http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/films/2010/kubricks-napoleon
  6. Web site: 2011 Graduates Fellows And Honorary Doctorates Recognised | University of Hertfordshire . Herts.ac.uk . 2013-06-04 . 2015-09-19.
  7. Web site: Shortcutz Amsterdam Annual Awards. hollandsefilm.nl. 14 February 2017.
  8. Web site: Rutger Hauer en Jan Harlan treden toe tot Shortcutz Amsterdam juryteam. filmfestival.nl. March 6, 2016. August 26, 2016.