Mara Mattuschka

Directing

Mara Mattuschka

Born 1959-05-22 · Sofia, Bulgaria

Mara Mattuschka is an award-winning filmmaker, actress and visual artist.

Acting credits

No artwork available
7.8

Mimi Minus spreads out a paper with a chequered pattern and drinks repeatedly from a bottle containing and dark liquid which is never emptied. The chequered paper is successively covered in chaotic painting until, finally, it is rolled out of the way. Underneath is a fresh chequered paper. With very intensive cutting, the film is composed of infinitely varied primary contradictions - black versus white, circle versus square, order versus chaos.

Pascal - Gödel

1986

Plötzlich und unerwartet - eine Déjà-Revue poster
7.0

A short film by the German experimental filmmaker Michael Brynntrup from 1993. The film describes a surrealistic and absurd cycle of activities in a hermetically sealed cemetery from which the actors cannot break out.

Plötzlich und unerwartet - eine Déjà-Revue

1993

Rococo comes to the Islands of the Huzzis poster
10.0

A despotic youth spends his vacation oppressing the peaceful inhabitants of an island with his evil fantasies.

Rococo comes to the Islands of the Huzzis

1989

No artwork available
9.0

Two women scientists investigate the various stages of evolutionary development. Drawn by the scientific linguistic system, they become enmeshed in the anal circuit.

Unternehmen Arschmaschine

1997

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Part 3 poster
NR

On the 28th of October 1884 Daniel Paul Schreber, candidate of the National Liberal Party in Chemnitz, suffered a heavy defeat at the elections of the German Reichstag. He was taken up in the mental clinic of the Leipzig University soon afterwards. To his rehabilition he wrote an extensive piece of work, "Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken" (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness), which was published in 1903 and led to his temporary dismissal. Hereby Schreber became the most quoted psychiatric patient in scientific literature. The third part was realized by Peter Tscherkassy based on a concept by Ernst Schmidt Jr.

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Part 3

1993

No artwork available
7.3

Hands vigorously pull scraps of paper from an antiquated printing press, while their owner remains invisible. Then Mimi Minus and a razor blade - the incident is still shocking. The shrouded head, wrapped in muslin, reappears, and black paint is daubed over the top ... no image retains its integrity, for each is crossed through, painted, double-exposed, spilt, soiled.

Ballhead: Ode to IBM

1985

No artwork available
5.0

Manuela, the mermaid, is annoyed: The only thing her counterparts in the self-awareness group are interested in is the question, "Where is your clitoris?".

Venus 220 Volt

1991

No artwork available
7.6

In NavelFable Mara Mattuschka subjects herself to a second birth through endless pairs of tights. Her body struggles so hard and in such a deformed manner from out of the layers of nylon that the sheer struggle for survival becomes visible.

NavelFable

1984

Beauty and the Beast poster
7.0

Autobiographical notes about bringing up children. A birth, the bite in the umbilical cord, a baby between sheets of music. Mimi fiddles educationally on a violin without strings, offers her breast and enjoys the little king with an improvised hysterical performance, and suddenly starts with Dadaistic oracles, letting the blead dance and carrying the child out into big wide world.

Beauty and the Beast

1993

No artwork available
8.0

The birth of the alphabet.

Caesarean Section

1987

No artwork available
8.5

Mimi Minus, the star, advertises a new, sticky, black, brain-cleaning agent. She uses it first on her reflection in a mirror in order to clean one half of her brain and subsequently applies it to her whole body...

Cerolax II

1985

No artwork available
10.0

In the 21st century, Mimi wakes up and her computer relays the order: "Go back to start. Let's load Ludwig!" A sort of chase through her past and future begins.

Loading Ludwig

1989

ID poster
4.8

Mimi Minus on the escalator of horror. Mara Mattuschka´s alter ego once again sets off on a tour de force of physical renunciation. First she goes into a tumble when the ground is pulled out from under her feet. Caught in a weightless space, she undergoes a strange metamorphosis. Mimi´s body is subjected to unnatural forces and gradually deforms, her skin ruptures and - as if the human shell were only an intermediate stage in the process of evolution - is shed like a cocoon; a reptilian monster emerges.

ID

2003

No artwork available
8.3

In Parasympathica the artist divides her body into two halves, one black and the other white, with everything held together by a crown she wears. This "split" figure rotates jerkily by means of single frame animation. As Mattuschka spins on her own axis in a movement resembling a butterfly, the contrasts between the two divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, are blurred.

Parasympathica

1986

No artwork available
7.2

And our old Emperor said: "Thank you, it’s been very nice, it was a pleasure!" (M. M.)

I Have Been Very Pleased

1987

S.O.S. Extraterrestria poster
6.5

The world as a plaything for a giantess from outer space. A Godzilla-imitation on the way to herself: the giantess from outer space in the streets of a big city, fooling around, producing destruction, copulating with the Eiffel Tower. An orchestra of big feelings, the melodrama, defamed in infantile sounds and absurd costume, in make-up-persiflage and grotesque body-art-performances.

S.O.S. Extraterrestria

1993

No artwork available
7.6

Titania, a clumsy adolescent, sits in the tub, on the top of the plug-hole, the entrance to a murky world full of filth, bugs and hazards, which connects her to all the ass-holes in the world. Elements of this world now hover like Ghosts on the surrounding tiles, while Mimi Minus ruminates on the impossibility of love.

The Sinking of Titania

1985

Behind the camera

Les Misérables poster
7.5

In this film, Mattuschka works exclusively with animation. The cheerful cartoon characters Mimi and Max have a bit of a childlike-bisexuality to them, even when the subject seems to be the desire for and the differences from the other sex: "Look at what I´ve got here," says Mimi when she lifts up her skirt, the reply she gets being, "Is that real...?".

Les Misérables

1987

No artwork available
7.8

Mimi Minus spreads out a paper with a chequered pattern and drinks repeatedly from a bottle containing and dark liquid which is never emptied. The chequered paper is successively covered in chaotic painting until, finally, it is rolled out of the way. Underneath is a fresh chequered paper. With very intensive cutting, the film is composed of infinitely varied primary contradictions - black versus white, circle versus square, order versus chaos.

Pascal - Gödel

1986

Burning Palace poster
6.2

Five people who are in a show at a bar, who live in this hotel and have very different relationships with one another. After the show – they are already sleeping – they are woken by Pan for the night and therefore wake up to the destruction that is held within them.

Burning Palace

2009

Burning Palace poster
6.2

Five people who are in a show at a bar, who live in this hotel and have very different relationships with one another. After the show – they are already sleeping – they are woken by Pan for the night and therefore wake up to the destruction that is held within them.

Burning Palace

2009

No artwork available
NR

In an occupied establishment - a kind of self-defined sub-cosmos of reality - there is a sensual search for lust and fulfillment taking place. Women and men dance, desire, interact; their perfectly choreographed body game becomes a symbiotic extension of an excessively hedonistic sub- conscious. Amidst it all: a mafia boss seeks to take control of the establishment and finds the meaning of life in the process. Perfect Garden is a fabulously hypnotic film, utopian and realistic all at once

Perfect Garden

2013

No artwork available
NR

In an occupied establishment - a kind of self-defined sub-cosmos of reality - there is a sensual search for lust and fulfillment taking place. Women and men dance, desire, interact; their perfectly choreographed body game becomes a symbiotic extension of an excessively hedonistic sub- conscious. Amidst it all: a mafia boss seeks to take control of the establishment and finds the meaning of life in the process. Perfect Garden is a fabulously hypnotic film, utopian and realistic all at once

Perfect Garden

2013

Phaidros poster
4.0

Phaidros is based on Plato's eponymous dialogue and plays in an LBQT+ milieu of a present-day metropolis. The actor Emil is meant to embody the character of the poet Phaedrus in a battle of words with Werner Maria, who slips into the role of Socrates. When the borders between friendship and sexual initiation soon blur beyond the events on stage, too, the shrill, carnivalesque scenario turns into grotesque love triangles and quadrangles, which ultimately even cause a casualty.

Phaidros

2018

Phaidros poster
4.0

Phaidros is based on Plato's eponymous dialogue and plays in an LBQT+ milieu of a present-day metropolis. The actor Emil is meant to embody the character of the poet Phaedrus in a battle of words with Werner Maria, who slips into the role of Socrates. When the borders between friendship and sexual initiation soon blur beyond the events on stage, too, the shrill, carnivalesque scenario turns into grotesque love triangles and quadrangles, which ultimately even cause a casualty.

Phaidros

2018

Running Sushi poster
NR

We enter a constructed setting, against the background of a video wall that suggests we are in a restaurant. A Japanese restaurant, as can be concluded from the conveyor belt which forms part of the fittings. Running Sushi consists of a casual conversation between Steffi and Johnny in a sushi restaurant, while the parallel world of thoughts and sensations of both characters takes the stage. Each new dish has major consequences in the grotesque dream reality.

Running Sushi

2008

Legal Errorist poster
NR

A body junkie: man must lay bare his hidden ingredients, dismantle his body, his integrity, his presence, and his identity in order to create a challenge both physical and metaphysical.

Legal Errorist

2005

Legal Errorist poster
NR

A body junkie: man must lay bare his hidden ingredients, dismantle his body, his integrity, his presence, and his identity in order to create a challenge both physical and metaphysical.

Legal Errorist

2005

Rococo comes to the Islands of the Huzzis poster
10.0

A despotic youth spends his vacation oppressing the peaceful inhabitants of an island with his evil fantasies.

Rococo comes to the Islands of the Huzzis

1989

Qvid Tvm poster
NR

Mara Mattuschka's experimental film lures the viewer into a singular. powerfully illustrated and colourful picaresque world. Gucki, the landlady's daughter, has never forgotten this place of carnal pleasures and reconstructs her vision of spiritual and bodily devotion through observations of theatrical practise. QVID TVM is an excessively existential parable about the myriad crossing of paths between people - from humiliation to punishment, fulfillment to bliss.

Qvid Tvm

2012

Qvid Tvm poster
NR

Mara Mattuschka's experimental film lures the viewer into a singular. powerfully illustrated and colourful picaresque world. Gucki, the landlady's daughter, has never forgotten this place of carnal pleasures and reconstructs her vision of spiritual and bodily devotion through observations of theatrical practise. QVID TVM is an excessively existential parable about the myriad crossing of paths between people - from humiliation to punishment, fulfillment to bliss.

Qvid Tvm

2012

Qvid Tvm poster
NR

Mara Mattuschka's experimental film lures the viewer into a singular. powerfully illustrated and colourful picaresque world. Gucki, the landlady's daughter, has never forgotten this place of carnal pleasures and reconstructs her vision of spiritual and bodily devotion through observations of theatrical practise. QVID TVM is an excessively existential parable about the myriad crossing of paths between people - from humiliation to punishment, fulfillment to bliss.

Qvid Tvm

2012

No artwork available
9.0

Two women scientists investigate the various stages of evolutionary development. Drawn by the scientific linguistic system, they become enmeshed in the anal circuit.

Unternehmen Arschmaschine

1997

No artwork available
9.0

Two women scientists investigate the various stages of evolutionary development. Drawn by the scientific linguistic system, they become enmeshed in the anal circuit.

Unternehmen Arschmaschine

1997

The Mozart Minute poster
5.0

Twenty-eight well-known filmmakers living and working in Austria were invited by WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006, to produce associative miniatures on Mozart. Requirement: they had to be one-minute artistic short films. The directors come from a whole range of different backgrounds, ranging from animated, experimental and short film to documentaries and feature films. The result is a multi-facetted sampler of diverse formal and contextual positions with regard to Mozart’s person and his influence on today’s society, art and culture. The contributions run the gamut from experimental-conceptual statements through socio-critical and documentary observations to pithy short feature films.

The Mozart Minute

2006

No artwork available
7.3

Hands vigorously pull scraps of paper from an antiquated printing press, while their owner remains invisible. Then Mimi Minus and a razor blade - the incident is still shocking. The shrouded head, wrapped in muslin, reappears, and black paint is daubed over the top ... no image retains its integrity, for each is crossed through, painted, double-exposed, spilt, soiled.

Ballhead: Ode to IBM

1985

No artwork available
7.3

Hands vigorously pull scraps of paper from an antiquated printing press, while their owner remains invisible. Then Mimi Minus and a razor blade - the incident is still shocking. The shrouded head, wrapped in muslin, reappears, and black paint is daubed over the top ... no image retains its integrity, for each is crossed through, painted, double-exposed, spilt, soiled.

Ballhead: Ode to IBM

1985

Part Time Heroes poster
2.0

In the experimental short film PART TIME HEROES film artists Mara Mattuschka and Chris Haring stage a ballet of vanities with retro flair. The search for fame elevator goes up and down and egos bust and boom. Each character is isolated in an anachronistic, film-star dressing room, left alone, subjected to sinister fittings. The golden room with the greatest striptease talent who constantly undresses yet is never naked... The film checks these beings, isolated through their hero competition, into the lonely heart hotel where they eavesdrop on one another through thin walls.

Part Time Heroes

2007

No artwork available
NR

An opera diva (Mimi Minus) makes her grand solo appearance. The individual stages of her transformation in the dressing room are celebrated with glamorous gestures. A meditative ritual becomes a trigger for the appearance of a second, identical opera diva. This one, however, immediately transforms through the deployment of the most wonderful Mattuscha animation techniques into an aged, wrinkled version of the star with less than zero glamour appeal. A Freudian dream game begins.

Comeback

2005

No artwork available
7.6

In NavelFable Mara Mattuschka subjects herself to a second birth through endless pairs of tights. Her body struggles so hard and in such a deformed manner from out of the layers of nylon that the sheer struggle for survival becomes visible.

NavelFable

1984

No artwork available
7.6

In NavelFable Mara Mattuschka subjects herself to a second birth through endless pairs of tights. Her body struggles so hard and in such a deformed manner from out of the layers of nylon that the sheer struggle for survival becomes visible.

NavelFable

1984