Daniel Zlotin

Daniel Zlotin (Ukrainian: Даніель Злотін, born June 8, 1984, in Kharkiv, Ukrainian SSR) is a German director, producer, cameraman and film editor of Ukrainian origin living in Cologne. Since 2002 he has created more than 600 music videos for music artists. In 2007 Zlotin co-founded StreetCinema production company, which he co-owned until its closure in 2018. Daniel Zlotin was born in 1984 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He attended the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management in Kyiv (Межрегиональная академия управления персоналом). At the same time he pursued a musical career as a rapper. In early 2003 he completed his first music video for the song he had recorded with three other rappers. Zlotin presented this video to regional TV stations, some of which included it in their program. Upon receiving positive feedback and requests from a number of Ukrainian hip-hop musicians, he decided to focus on the production of music videos. In 2004 he moved to Cologne to study media design for picture and sound at the Georg-Simon-Ohm vocational college. As his final project, Zlotin shot a short film "Das Geburtstagsgeschenk", where the rapper Eko Fresh appears for the first time as an actor. In 2007, together with Christian Schmitz and Malic Bargiel, Zlotin founded the media production company, StreetCinema, in Cologne, with which he subsequently produced commercials, image films and music videos. The company mostly specialized in the production of music videos, whereby they were responsible for the whole production process, from the conception through the technical implementation to post-production. Initially, StreetCinema mainly shot music videos for Eko Fresh and members of its German Dream label such as Farid Bang, Capkekz, SDiddy, Summer Cem and Manuellsen. In 2011 Zlotin began to shoot for pop musicians such as Revolverheld, Menowin Fröhlich, Tom Gaebel, Maite Kelly and Willi Herren. Later, while working on the video Massaka Kokain 2 of Massiv, he collaborated for the first time with Kollegah, the rapper contracted by the Selfmade Records. Zlotin continued to collaborate with the Düsseldorf label, for video creations by Favorite, Karate Andi and the 257ers, followed by a series of productions with Xatar and SSIO of Alles oder Nix Records. According to Zlotin, the years 2013 and 2014 represented the boom phase of StreetCinema. Six to seven projects per month were realized during this time.