Lutz Mommartz
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For over five decades, experimental filmmaker Lutz Mommartz shaped the German film and art scene with a radically different understanding of film. Since the 1960s, he was active in Düsseldorf as a filmmaker and artist, and his work raised key questions about the authenticity of film and its relationship with the audience. He achieved his international breakthrough in 1967 at the Knokke Festival, when his film "Self-Shots" won an award. Parallel to his work as a municipal official, he was a motivator in the Düsseldorf art scene, for example, as co-founder of the legendary artists' bar Creamcheese, and was represented in numerous exhibitions such as documenta 4 (with his "Zweileinwandkino" (two-screen cinema) in 1968) and STRATEGY: GET ARTS (Edinburgh, 1970). He received the Silver Federal Film Prize in 1977 for "As if by Beckett" and in 1978 for "The Garden of Eden" Mommartz stood for "the other cinema," beyond the mainstream, with the goal of establishing film as a means of artistic expression. In the 1970s, as part of the Düsseldorf Film Group, he campaigned for the institutional recognition of film in art. In 1975, he was appointed the first professor of film at the University of Fine Arts Münster (then an outpost of the Düsseldorf Art Academy) and headed the film class until 1999. In 2020, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf dedicated a retrospective to Mommartz's work. His works were most recently exhibited at the ZKM Karlsruhe and the Julia Stoschek Foundation. Lutz Mommartz is remembered as a pioneer of artistic film—uncomfortable, experimental, and ahead of his time.
Known for
Credits
Up / Down (1967)
Director
Overwhelmed (1969)
Director
Self Shots (1967)
Director
Solidarity of Tenents (1970)
Director
Immatrikulation (1968)
Director
Die Schiller (1975)
Director
Markeneier (1967)
Director
The Stairs (1967)
Director
Color Stripes (1967)
Director
Inspection (1971)
Director
3 Glasses (1968)
Director
Spanish Crime Story (1970)
Director
Dress (1985)
Director
Monuments (1972)
Director
Painting (1996)
Director
Railroad (1967)
Director
Social Sculpture (1969)
Director
Wing Flapping (1975)
Director
Teenage Art (1969)
Director
Danceloop (1967)
Director
Wall of Shadows (1993)
Director
Haircut (1974)
Director
Schattenkur (1979)
Director
Filming Operation (1982)
Director
Slow Waltz (1987)
Director
Old Age Porn (1970)
Director
Wählt ADF (1969)
Director
The Finger (1967)
Director
Two-Screen Cinema (1968)
Director
Focus (1987)
Director
Eddie and Lutz (1979)
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Tango Through Germany (1981)
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400 m IFF (1969)
Director
More Than Two (1978)
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Margret’s Film (2007)
Director
The Aggressive Brown Water Inside the Tubes of the Professors (1971)
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Most of My Friends Now Live in Berlin (1971)
Director
Way to the Neighbour (1968)
Director
Film Group Düsseldorf - Sketch (1972)
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The City of Düsseldorf is Very Beautiful (1972)
Director
Every Human is A Table, Only I Am A Chair (1983)
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The Fair War 1525 (1975)
Director
As if by Beckett (1976)
Director
Marble Always Remains Cool (1985)
Director
Transit to Berlin (1983)
Director
Fear Under the Stars (1989)
Director
The Breath of Sheep (1970)
Director
Window to The Yard (1996)
Director
The Last Smoke (1986)
Director
The Garden of Eden (1977)
Director
The Fear at the Rhein (1974)
Director
The Beautiful Sigmar (1971)
Director
Four Little Pieces (1988)
Director
Otto Piene's Studio Party (1966)
Director
Görreskeller und JETZT - Köln (1970)
Director
Spaniards Meeting in Essen (1970)
Director