From Experimental Cinema

Matthias Müller (alternative spelling Matthias Mueller) (born 1961) is a German experimental filmmaker and curator, often working in the field of found footage films. From 1994 to 1997 he worked as Guest Professor at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (Germany), and from 1998 to 1999 at the Dortmund Fachhochschule. Since 2003 he is Professor for Experimental Film at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM), Cologne, Germany. For his films he has received numerous awards from many international festivals, including the American Federation of Arts Experimental Film Award in 1988, the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1996, the main award at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen in 1999, the Ken Burns “Best of the Festival“ Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2003, and the German Short Film Prize for Animation in 2006.

"His works can be read as an unwritten history of experimental cinema in Germany. He has been known in the film world for decades due to his presence in numerous short and experimental film festivals in Germany and worldwide and in communal cinemas. Furthermore, in recent years, he has made a name for himself in the art world as well with his video installations and photography. From the Super 8 movement in the eighties as well as the genre-crossing work with found footage, through the mutual interweaving of analogue and digital image media up to the cinematographic installation: In Müller’s biography as an artist and in his film aesthetics, Hollywood, avant-garde film and queer cinema meet, as well as the radical changes in media and representation technologies in the eighties and nineties – together with the resulting changes in the cinematic landscape, which for him too have opened up to include the art spaces.

"Müller's determined interest in questions of memory, traces of the past and the historical body makes his films, videos and installations the central point for a vast array of interrelated approaches." [1]

Filmography

• 2009 Contre-jour (with Christoph Girardet)
• 2006 Kristall (with Christoph Girardet)
• 2004 Album
• 2003 Play (with Christoph Girardet)
• 2003 Mirror (with Christoph Girardet)
• 2002 Manual (with Christoph Girardet)
• 2002 Beacon (with Christoph Girardet)
• 2001 Phantom
• 2000 Phoenix Tapes (with Christoph Girardet)
• 2000 Nebel
• 2000 Breeze
• 1999 Vacancy
• 1997 Pensão Globo
• 1995 Alpsee
• 1994 Sternenschauer
• 1994 Sleepy Haven
• 1990 Home Stories
• 1989 Aus der Ferne – The Memo Book

References

• The Cinema of Difference, article by Matthias Müller, Millennium Film Journal No.30/31, 1997, pp.3-6. Available online.
• Scattering Stars: The Films of Matthias Muller by Mike Hoolboom, Millennium Film Journal No.30/31, 1997, pp..80-88. Available online.
• A Journey into the Light: Matthias Müller’s Film Pensão Globo by Daniel Kothenschulte, in Senses of Cinema.
• A Poet of Images – The work of Matthias Müller, by Peter Tscherkassky.
• Interview to Matthias Müller & Christoph Girardet by Blogs&Docs.

External links

• Matthias Müller at the Internet Movie Database
• Biography, links to films