I grew up in Germany, in Berlin. My father was German and my mother was Polish. We lived in a flat in Berlin where my father had also an animation bench, because he was in the film industry after a sort of fashion, not really... not the sort of film industry I'm in, or I was in. But he was trained as an engineer and he used film as an adjunct to his engineering work. So, for studying mechanical processes. He had his own company, making these films which were anything from 20 seconds to two hours long. He made two in the period between, let's say... It started in the silent days, it started, I think, round about 1924/25, something like that, and went on into the sound period. He had a friend who did the sound, once sound started. But most of his films didn't need sound because they were studies of some mechanical process, and they didn't require sound. Towards the end of his career, as it were, there were two long documentaries which were shown in cinemas, but the bulk of his work was non-theatrical. Anyway, to help with this work he had an animation bench in the flat and occasionally, you know, aged at about six or seven or eight, I was allowed to help by cranking the handle, or whatever. So that was fun. And that was my first contact with the cinema, but I don't think it was that that led me to my career choice, I shall call it. It was rather seeing films in the cinema, and I got quite fond of going to the cinema fairly early on. I remember I had a little badge made up from a trade journal, the company called UFA which is Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft which was the MGM of Berlin, had this little sign and I had a badge made up and I wore it in the playground. When I went to school when I was playing in the playground I wore this little badge which said, UFA.