Christoph Schlingensief

Film & theatre director, action artist, writer, TV presenter
Born in Germany in 1960, Schlingensief was a film and theatre director, writer and TV presenter. He shot his first film at the age of 8. He studied German linguistics and literature, philosophy and art at the University of Munich, and began making films from the early 1980’s, receiving great acclaim for his “Germany Trilogy” (“100 Years Adolf Hitler – The Last Hour in the Führerbunker”, “The German Chainsaw Massacre – The First Hour of the Reunification”, “Terror 2000 – Germany out of Control”) (1989-92). In the 1990’s he made his debut as a theatre director with “100 Years of CDU”. While continuing to present new work at the Volksbühne in Berlin, he also began to engage with projects outside of theatre spaces from 1997. That year saw him create “Passion Impossible, Wake Up Call For Germany”, a week-long “mission station” near Hamburg’s main station, where many homeless, drug addicts and art audiences gathered. In 1998 he set up a political party called “Chance 2000” for the 2000 federal elections. He started working on television from 1997, as the host of talk shows such as Talk 2000 and U3000. His first opera production was Wagner’s “Parsifal”, opening to acclaim at the Bayreuth Festival in 2004. In 2008 he was diagnosed with lung cancer and began to create work on the themes of illness and death. Construction began in 2010 of an African opera village, Remdoogo, in Burkina Faso. Schlingensief passed away that August at the age of 49, though work at Remdoogo carries on and the opera village continues to evolve. The Venice Biennale 2011 awarded the Golden Lion for national pavilions to Germany for its exhibition of Schlingensief’s work.