Channel 4 pre-buys Woodcut Media, Rainmaker Content’s Hitler: A Life in Pictures

Channel 4 in the UK has pre-bought a series that explores both the public and the private lives of Adolf Hitler via rarely seen photos and home movies.

Hitler: A Life in Pictures uses films thought to have been lost for 27 years (photo: Alamy)

Hitler: A Life in Pictures (4×60′), a coproduction between UK indie Woodcut Media and international distributor Rainmaker Content, was pre-bought by Polly Scates, acquisitions manager for C4.

The series is executive produced by Matthew Gordon and Kate Beal, along with Jonathan Mayo, who serves as series producer for Woodcut Media.

It features the photos and films of two people who dedicated their lives to documenting Hitler: his mistress Eva Braun and his official photographer Heinrich Hoffmann.

The archive footage includes 1,300 recently digitised, rarely seen photos taken by Hoffmann and material garnered from Braun’s personal photo collection along with more than four hours of her home movies, mostly filmed at Hitler’s home in the Bavarian Alps.

The films had been thought to be lost for 27 years but were found by Lutz Becker, who features in the series as an expert alongside Richard Schneider, the special projects preservationist digitising Hoffmann’s photos.

Vicky Ryan, co-chief operating officer at Rainmaker, said: “We’re sure our clients around the world will be extremely interested in this first opportunity to see these astonishing photographs alongside the home video footage shot by Eva Braun.”