Matthias Merkle (director)

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Matthias Merkle (born March 9, 1970 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) is a German director and author. He has lived and worked in Berlin since the early 1990s.

Life

After starting at the city and state theater, mainly independent artistic work, first theater, then film productions.

Merkle's staging feats include a. the 9½-hour production of the Spanish reading drama by Fernando de Rojas Die Celestina as a theater soap in seven episodes (2000, Tacheles Berlin) and the film adaptation of Homer's Iliad as a choral story by an 11-person ensemble at the original locations in Troia / Turkey (2004).

Long-term collaboration with the actresses Henriette Heinze and Jule Böwe , the musician duo Elektroblitz Mitte , the costume designer Sven Bindseil, the dramaturge Antje Borchardt and the film editor Heinrich Bindschädel.

Growing up in his parents', initially tiny, later medium-sized company in the metalworking industry, Matthias Merkle developed a decisive relationship to how little bourgeoisie prosperity and bourgeoisie norms he needed and learned to appreciate the advantages of self-determined activity, entrepreneurial spirit and entrepreneurship, apparently irreversibly. His artistic work will always be characterized by headstrong ideas and a respectful, almost loving approach to his consumers.

theatre

Matthias Merkle learned his profession as a director at the theater, where he began in 1989 as Jürgen Kruse's assistant director at the Freiburg Theater and started his own productions in 1993, initially at the Stuttgart State Theater (starting with his debut, the 1995 staging of Strindberg's Schwanenweiß with Anne Tismer and Samuel Weiss in the leading roles), then also at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus , Staatstheater Mainz and Theaterhaus Jena .

At the same time, he staged and produced several pieces in Berlin from 1993 onwards, which were performed in the Off-Stage Theater in the Schoko-Laden , before founding the Dramatic Theater in 1998 , a small production company with which Merkle worked independently and with various celebrities and original venues.
In 1996 Merkle directed Heiner Müller's Hamlet machine with Stefanie Liebscher and Caspar Weiss in the roles of Ophelia and Hamlet. The rest of the staff is provided by a five-member girls' choir, who also incorporate scenes from Shakespeare's Hamlet into Müller's text in a chorical, dialogical and scenic manner. Merkle also casts the young actresses Henriette Heinze and Jule Böwe in this choir , with whom he will subsequently realize a number of other works - even after both have long since tread new paths.
Merkle's production of Kleist's Penthesilea (New Year's Eve 1996) with Henriette Heinze in the leading role remains memorable . A jealous conspiracy by the rest of the ensemble prevents any further performances after the premiere; However, the only two critics who saw the premiere promptly nominate Heinze in the annual report of the magazine Theater heute as “Young Actress of the Year” and thus contribute to her breakthrough career. Finally, the
staging of two plays by Wolfgang Bauer ( Film und Frau 1995 and Magic Afternoon with Jule Böwe, 1996) anticipates the turn of the German theaters towards the English kitchen sink drama of the following years and opens the way for Jule Böwe to the German barracks Theater and the Schaubühne.

More and more innovative narrative forms are moving into the center of Merkle's productions; In terms of content, he is fascinated by the story fund of the undogmatic Greek mythology, formally he develops structural elements of the tragedy (with great enthusiasm, especially for the speaking choir), but also elicits a new monological-dialogic quality from lyrical and narrative texts.

With the conception and production of a series of theatrical installations and productions on Berlin's Museum Island ( God Lights Program , in cooperation with the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2000–2004) Merkle ended his work as a theater director and turned to film. Trigger the production Singe anger : Merkle staged on Berlin's Museum Island Homer's Iliad in the transfer of Johann Heinrich Voss in a shortened 2½-hour version as a choral story of a 11-member ensemble. When visiting the original location of the epic, the ruins of Troia in Turkey, the idea arose to film the narrative implementation at this location. Thanks to the cooperation of the head of the excavations in Troia at the time, Prof. Manfred Osman Korfmann (University of Tübingen) and the Homer researcher Prof. Joachim Latacz (University of Basel), the film was made in the summer of 2003 as a cinematic interweaving of the speaking cultural landscape with dialogically rectified and choral - narrative verses of the epic. The film Singe den Zorn , released on DVD in 2004, is considered a unique, successful performance of the complicated German hexameter.

Movie

Merkle presented his first full-length feature film in 2004 with Singe den Zorn , the aesthetically headstrong film adaptation of Homer's epic Iliad in German verse by JH Voss, shot at original locations in and around Troia (Turkey). The film eludes current narrative patterns in cinema and television films - and it ignites Merkle's enthusiasm for the way film works. As early as the beginning of 2005 he was writing and filming an unconventional chamber play in Berlin and Athens ( initial situation ) in which he - alongside Luisa Buzasi, Klara Höfels and Henriette Heinze - also acted as an actor. Together with the dramaturge Antje Borchardt, he founded his own production company Retsina-Film in Berlin-Neukölln , which was responsible for all of Merkle's film work from 2005 onwards.

At the beginning of 2006 Merkle wrote the script for his third feature film The Immortals , the shooting will take place in April 2006 in Neukölln. A love triangle is told about two writers and their lover; the main roles are played by Jule Böwe , Henriette Heinze and Zlatko Maltar. The film will be completed in June 2007.

Merkle labels several of his films as "Neukölln Independent" and confidently acknowledges where and how they were made. A strong revitalization of the auteur film can be seen in the way of working and the results; Merkle is impressed by the early works of RW Fassbinder in both respects . The decisive courses of action, which do not want to be everyday likely, but tell of extraordinary people and their feelings, thoughts and actions, are also owed to the enthusiasm for the work of Heinrich von Kleist and his preference for improbable and therefore all the more believable turns.

From spring 2007 Merkle will be shooting and producing short films in quick succession, which will initially be published primarily on the Internet (Sender Freies Neukölln).

Internet

At the end of November 2007, the first edition of the Sender Freies Neukölln, a new monthly film program, which Merkle was responsible for as an author, director, cameraman, speaker, etc., was published. In addition to a short film, each issue presented a speech by the negating mayor of Neukölln, a new episode from the popular Uschi series, documentation of the creation of one of the 11 masterpieces - from Neukölln's large studios and other serial contributions. The entire program looked funny, but most of the contributions were serious.

Filmography

• 2004: Sing the Wrath. Homer's Iliad in Troia / Sing, Goddess, the Anger (with Klara Höfels, Adnan Maral, Heinrich Rolfing, Inga Dietrich, Katharina Blaschke and others, premiere: AGON Festival, Athens, Nov. 2004)
• 2004: Short film Greetings from Olympus: Penalty
• 2005: Feature film Starting Situation / Point of Departure (with Henriette Heinze, Klara Höfels and Luisa Buzasi)
• 2006: Short film Dig Deeper (AGON Festival, Thessaloniki)
• 2006: Documentation Quality prevails
• 2007: Feature film Die Unsterblichen / The Immortals (with Jule Böwe, Henriette Heinze, Zlatko Maltar, Irina Potapenko, Kim Walterskirchen, Inga Dietrich and others)
• 2007: short film rock'n roll
• 2007: Short film Uschis save the world
• 2007: Short film Everything will be different around Uschi
• 2007: Short film Weihnachtsuschi
• 2007: short film ring twice
• 2007: Pilot short film series Should be new seed again ...
• 2010: Feature film Exodos

theatre

• 1993: Müller, Quartet , Berlin
• 1993: Kleist, Käthchen! , Berlin, with Saskia Taeger, Mex Schlüpfer u. a.
• 1995: Strindberg, Schwanenweiß , Staatstheater Stuttgart, with Anne Tismer and Samuel Weiss
• 1995: Goldoni, Mirandolina , Berlin, with Rainald Grebe, Sebastian Röhrle a. a.
• 1995: Bauer, Film und Frau , Berlin
• 1996: Semprún, pale mother, delicate sister , State Theater Stuttgart
• 1996: Müller, Hamlet machine , with Henriette Heinze , Jule Böwe , Stefanie Liebscher, Caspar Weiss a. a., Berlin
• 1996: Roselt, Dollmatch , UA, Staatstheater Mainz
• 1996: Bauer, Magic Afternoon , with Jule Böwe, Henriette Heinze u. a., Berlin
• 1997: Euripides, The Phoenicians , Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
• 1997: KLEIST / Robert Guiskard , with Jule Böwe, Anja Thiemann, Kim Walterskirchen and Silvio Hildebrandt, Theaterhaus Jena
• 1997: Kleist, Penthesilea! , with Henriette Heinze, Berlin
• 1998: Bauer, Insalata mista , DEA, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
• 1998: Billie Holiday , with Henriette Heinze, Berlin
• 2000: Fernando de Rojas, the celestina , with Saskia Taeger, Henriette Heinze, Caroline Korneli, Georg Ansas Otto a. a., Tacheles, Berlin
• 2000: Myths outside , Pergamon Museum, Berlin
• 2001: Olympia underground , Pergamon Museum, Berlin
• 2001: Kleist, Amphitryon , Pergamon Museum, Berlin, with Saskia Taeger, Susanne Opitz, Christian Schulz and Georg Ansas Otto
• 2002: Hauptmann, The Sunken Bell , Pergamon Museum, Berlin, with Kim Walterskirchen, Susanne Opitz, Stefanie Liebscher, Julia Mahlke a. a.
• 2002: Hroswitha von Gandersheim , Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
• 2003: Ilias project , with Christian Schulz, Klara Höfels, Adnan Maral , Heinrich Rolfing , Inga Dietrich, Katharina Blaschke u. a., Neues Museum, Berlin, and guest performance at Troia Festival, Çanakkale
• 2003: Moira! - The spindle of necessity , Schinkel Museum, Berlin

Book, CD, DVD

• Sing the anger. Homer's Iliad in Troy DVD, 2004. ISBN 3-00-014845-0
• Myth, not fairy tale by Antje Borchardt. Ludwigshafen am Rhein, 2006. ISBN 3-9810361-0-7
• Sing the wrath of Elektroblitz Mitte. Audio CD, 2005, PHONECTOR.

Web links

• Matthias Merkle in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from November 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.