My Favourite Alex Feil Commercials

This is another in the globally popular ACES series, of featuring commercial filmmakers and directors that I admire, for their skills in bringing creative concepts and storylines to enthralling life.

Alex Feil

Based in in Los Angeles, California, USA, German born director, writer, filmmaker, and producer Alex Feil, has earned numerous international Grand Prix awards for his advertising work, is a recurring judge of the Art Directors Club’s advertising festivals, a founding member of the Los Angeles Greenpeace volunteer leader group, and an educationalist of sustainable living and environmental protection.

MUW Saatchi & Saatchi agency’s Deutsche Telekom festive season campaign, spanning  ten European countries, is a motivational T-Mobile brand communication of message and meaning, calling for social cohesion at a time when the world feels more divided than ever.

The superbly produced campaign commercial, masterly directed by filmmaker Alex Feil, features a compelling metaphoric portrayal, of how connections begin when barriers break, that is thought-provokingly filmic.

BMW’s new generation of luxury sedans with integrated security protection, the BMW i7 Protection and BMW 7 Protection models, with their globally unique vehicle ‘Protection Core’, comprised of model-specific self-supporting body structures, made from armour steel, that are then combined with safety features such as armoured glass and the additional armouring of the underbody and roof.

Both models are built in an elaborate “craft manufacturing” process at Dingolfing, a town in southern Bavaria, Germany, that is the home of the BMW assembly plant.

Skilfully directed by filmmaker Alex Feil, and filmed in Sophia, the cinematic commercial features BMW’s first, fully-electric i7 Series Protection Sedan, in what at first appears to be a trailer for a tense, big screen epic, spy-thriller, but instead of the obligatory shootout between would be assassins and secret service agents, the commercial ends peacefully with the ‘secure’ driving pleasure of BMW i7’s Protection.

Depicting an otherworldly, modern-day fairy tale, of a town populated by cylindrical, hugely rotund inhabitants, masterly directed by filmmaker Alex Feil, and featuring a soundtrack by Supreme Music of Dolly Parton’s hit song, “All I Can Do”, the commercial in spite of it being satirical, nevertheless courted some criticism from viewers who accused Edeka of ‘fat-shaming’.

As the adage goes; ‘one can please most people, most of the time, (40 million of them in fact), but not all the people, all of the time’.

Footnote:
The commercial evokes some smiling reminiscences of the Hezarfen Ahmed Celebi legend, a captivating figure in Ottoman history, celebrated as a daring inventor who achieved a feat of early human flight with his handmade wings.

The commercial also has as surprise in store for Automotive Industry followers.  Amusingly, the passenger playing the role of the Grim Reaper, is none other than ex VW boss, Ferdinand Piëch.

In 1955 Renzo signed a deal with BMW, selling all the tooling, and one of the finest makers of luxurious motorcars the world has ever known, began producing the cheapest, most basic, and funniest looking car ever.

Cheaper than some motorcycles, the Isetta arrived just in time to take Germany by storm.  In a country starved of cheap automobiles, 50,000 vehicles were sold in less than a year. Volkswagen at the time was considered to be a vehicle for a middle-class sector of business and professional people, that to working class people, was unaffordable.

There are many stories about the Iconic BMW Isetta, but the remarkable story of mechanic Klaus-Günter courageous ingenuity, takes top spot and needs to told.

In 1973 the German Democratic Republic, placed East Berlin’s Border Troops under orders to shoot perpetrators attempting to cross the border wall illegally into West Berlin that resulted in 600 deaths.

‘The Small Escape’ scenario is based on a true story of formidable, life-endangering daring, by West Berlin mechanic Klaus-Günter Jacobi’s ingenious plan to smuggle his friend Manfred Koster out of East Berlin, without arousing the suspicion of the guards at the ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ border-crossing.

He devised a way to create a concealed space in his tiny BMW Isetta, to stow away a grown adult. A remarkable, if not miraculous engineering achievement, that even today is hard to believe could successfully hide a 1.7 m man in a vehicle that is a mere 1.37 m wide, and 2.29 m long.

Filmed in Budapest, Hungary, and directed by filmmaker Alex Feil, the dramatic recreation of the escape to freedom, makes for compelling viewing of the ‘Cold War’ era’s most draconic separation of family and friends.