Elfi Mikesch

Camera operator

May 31, 1940 (86 years)

Judenburg, Styria, Austria

Biography

Elfi Mikesch was born on May 31, 1940 in Judenburg, Styria, Austria. She is a cinematographer and director, known for Execution: A Story of Mary (1979), I Often Think of Hawaii (1978) and Malina (1991). She has been married to Fritz Mikesch since 1960.

Filmography

5.5

Seduction: The Cruel Woman

Wanda, a dominatrix who runs an S&M gallery on the Hamburg waterfront, must choose between her lesbian lover and an American trainee.

6.2

Malina

An unusual story of a triangular relationship in Vienna. A woman shares an apartment with a man named Malina. The woman meets Ivan and falls under his spell. It will be her last great passion. Her feelings are so strong and all-encompassing that Ivan can neither understand nor return them.

4.0

Erotique

The sexual fantasies of women are explored by four female directors.

5.4

The Einstein of Sex: Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld

The life story of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a German Jew, who as a physician established the field of sexology, and fought militantly against German anti-sodomy laws in the late 19th century. The script reveals main characters in Hirschfeld's life including impossible love interest Baron von Teschenberg, and Hirschfeld's aids- young Karl Giese and guardian angel, the transvestite Dorchen, as they establish the First Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin in 1920, and follows their struggles to keep it open, up to the rise of the Third Reich in the mid 1930s.

6.5

The Rose King

A mentally unstable woman and her son move to a sprawling mansion in Portugal to grow roses.

5.2

Deux

After reading a postcard that her mother let go in the wind, a woman learns that she has a twin.

5.9

Tough Love

Half documentary, half docu-drama about a German karate champion, who used to be a successful pimp...

7.5

Exekution: A Study of Mary

This film is in effect a slideshow of exquisite single photographic images in sparkling black and white, representing Mikesch’s own version of Mary Stuart. “The drama of a woman who attempted a kind of liberal emancipation in a time of upheaval, but got caught in the snares of men,” in her words. Confronted with layers and layers of conflicting information about “how it really was” Mikesch decided not to try to be a historian, but to radicalise the narrative and condense it into striking images of passion, power, love, pain and death.

6.5

Hey Stranger

An actor and poet falls in love with a former mortuary photographer turned waitress. They find themselves caught up way over their heads in a dirty political and financial affair, an art smuggling case that touches them merely for the fact that it may separate them, be it through death or exile.

N/A

Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz: A Mega Movie and Its Story

A documentary about the making of the television mini-series by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, including interviewees with the principal actors.

5.5

Mondo Lux: The Visual Worlds of Werner Schroeter

Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life.

10.0

Daily Chicken

Two sisters try to manage life alone after their mother's accident.

6.5

Macumba

Max Taurus, a sort of amateur detective, pursues the traces of general omni-present crime back to a partially demolished house. There, the remaining tenants try to gain pleasure and power from progressive abandonment in order to tear down their own conventionalities.

7.0

Alex

The story of a child who faces the emptiness that surrounds the figure of his parents, disappeared in Africa.

2.0

Survival in Berlin-Neukölln

About Stefan Stricker, who calls himself Juwelia and has been running a gallery on Sanderstraße in Berlin Neukölln for many years. Every weekend he invites guests to shamelessly recount from his life and to sing poetic songs written with his friend from Hollywood Jose Promis. Juwelia has been poor and sexy all her life, has always struggled for recognition, but only partially.

10.0

Canale grande

A young woman is fed up with the usual consumer's television and begins to make her own television, or more correctly, closevision. She is now a reporter who wanders around Berlin with her camera and 'telecasting apparatus' on her back. Her livingroom has been transformed into a studio and here the different programs are assembled and aired: statements, interviews, realistic and phantastic programs.

4.9

Anita – Dances of Vice

In modern-day Berlin (1987), Frau Kutowski goes insane, believing herself to be the (real-life) notorious Anita Berber, a nude art dancer/drug addict/scandalous figure of post-WWI Berlin. (Berber died of tuberculosis in 1928, having achieved significant success and recognition throughout the dance world.) Frau Kutowski is placed in a mental hospital, where in her own mind she acts out Berber's final days, including in her fantasies the hospital's staff and patients, to represent Anita's friends and associates.

10.0

The Party: Nature Morte

The eponymous party is hosted by Queenie and Burrs, long-term lovers who are rapidly growing apart.

6.2

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's World on a Wire: Looking Ahead to Today

A retrospective look at the making of "World on a Wire".

5.0

My Father Is Coming

Vicky, an out-of-work actress, struggling waitress and lesbian has her whole life thrown into turmoil when her father comes from Germany to visit. The main problem is that Vicky has told him she is a successful actress and happily married. She enlists the help of a gay friend to play her husband. Using a large range of characters—gay, lesbian, straight, transsexuals—the film creates a funny and touching view of family dynamics and sexuality.