Lutz Mommartz
- Known for
- Directing
- Born
- March 6, 1934
- Died
- July 26, 2025 (aged 91)
- Birthplace
- Erkelenz, Germany
Biography
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
Filmography
Margret’s Film
Movie · Director
Window to The Yard
Movie · Director
Painting
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Wall of Shadows
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Fear Under the Stars
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Four Little Pieces
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Focus
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Slow Waltz
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The Last Smoke
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Dress
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Marble Always Remains Cool
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Every Human is A Table, Only I Am A Chair
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Transit to Berlin
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Filming Operation
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Tango Through Germany
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Schattenkur
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Eddie and Lutz
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More Than Two
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The Garden of Eden
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As if by Beckett
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Die Schiller
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The Fair War 1525
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Wing Flapping
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The Fear at the Rhein
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Haircut
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Film Group Düsseldorf - Sketch
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The City of Düsseldorf is Very Beautiful
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Monuments
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The Beautiful Sigmar
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Most of My Friends Now Live in Berlin
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Inspection
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The Aggressive Brown Water Inside the Tubes of the Professors
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Spanish Crime Story
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Old Age Porn
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The Breath of Sheep
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Solidarity of Tenents
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Görreskeller und JETZT - Köln
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Spaniards Meeting in Essen
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Social Sculpture
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Overwhelmed
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400 m IFF
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Wählt ADF
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Teenage Art
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Way to the Neighbour
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Immatrikulation
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3 Glasses
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Two-Screen Cinema
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Railroad
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Self Shots
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Markeneier
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The Finger
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Danceloop
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Up / Down
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The Stairs
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Color Stripes
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Otto Piene's Studio Party
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