Based in New York, The Haus was founded by producers Ivo van Riet and Yan Schoenefeld, formerly of Neue Sentimental Films (NSF), to fulfill what they saw as the need to give young creative talent a working home.

"The Haus is a stimulating place where people meet, explore, work together and influence each other," says van Riet. "We have a variety of media artists here who come in and out, ask for advice, and do stuff from very simple things to productions or shoots."

The Haus' core business is commercial and promo production and they have a roster of four directors who are signed forexclusive US representation, consisting of Richard Reiss, David McElwaine, Alexander Kane and Lars Knorrn.

Of these directors' reels, the pervading afterthought is that they are as diverse as they are talented, which of course, is by design. "We choose our roster so that in a perfect world, a script comes in and it goes to one director. We'd like to avoid that one script is suitable for four directors," admits van Riet.

The Haus is also opened up to feature filmmakers, photographers and other creative types who share an ideology and vision with the rest of the residents. Feature filmmakers who work non-exclusively at The Haus are Till Schauder, Ralf Hahn, Christiane Gude, Robert Hanson as well as McElwaine and Kane.

"For so many talented people sometimes a chair and a computer is enough to get started. That's what we provide for our non-signed directors. They work on their own projects and we facilitate them with an infrastructure," says van Riet.

Though operating as an independent company, NSF is a stakeholder in the operations, funding a large portion of the startup. As such, The Haus functions within the NSF worldwide network. But van Riet hopes that The Haus will be a separate company within the next six to nine months. "And that's the way we want to proceed," he adds.

After suffering a blow of cancelled work after September 11, The Haus currently has projects on the go with Mercedes Benz and Bergdorf Goodman, are doing some service work in North Carolina with Daimler Chrysler, are bidding on several other projects and are in the process of signing a rep.

"Unfortunately, last month there was absolutely nothing," van Riet says. "We had a pretty full agenda until the end of October but everything was cancelled after September 11. But I think it's a matter of time. Hopefully the city will keep building up."

The Haus> www.inthehaus.com