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Filmmaker Maria Mohr will assume a professorship for film and video at Merz Akademie in the winter semester of 2023/24. She would like to accompany and support students in developing their own language as authors. Her focus is to design spaces that reflect on the complexity of reality while also providing orientation and promoting a personal attitude. Mohr pursues these goals in her films, in her teaching as well as in her social commitment. “Society needs people today, as it will tomorrow, who look at the world with curiosity and openness as a basis for responsible action. Film is an important school of perception in this.”
Maria Mohr has been working as a filmmaker and film teacher for over 20 years. The core of her work lies in documentary - on the border to the performative. Initially, she studied French and architecture in Darmstadt and Paris. At that time she was already involved with dance, performance, singing, photography and analog film. In 2005 she finished her studies in Experimental Media Design at the Berlin University of the Arts with her multi-award winning short film Cousin Cousine. Her filmic portfolio includes numerous cinema documentaries, short films and image films. Maria Mohr has taught at the German University in Cairo (GUC) as a film lecturer in the Media Design Department, at the Berlin Campus of the GUC and at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Offenbach.
“The transdisciplinary approach of the Merz Akademie, the combination of art, design and science practiced here, and a team of renowned artists, designers and scientists are a highly attractive framework for my own interdisciplinary research and teaching,” says Maria Mohr about her upcoming task as Professor of Film and Video. She sees teaching as a space in which students with their unique imprints and perspectives can enter into productive exchange and open new spaces among others in film. “In the individual support of students and their projects it is all about thinking, questioning, activating, motivating and equipping oneself with the necessary theoretical and practical tools.”
Merz Akademie Rector Barbara M. Eggert is pleased with Maria Mohr’s appointment: “With the appointment of Maria Mohr, the university gains a personality who represents a great enrichment for the institution, both through her filmmaking and her expertise in higher education didactics. She is an excellent fit for us and I am very much looking forward to welcoming Maria Mohr soon on-site as a new professor for film and video in the Merz Akademie team.”
With the Merz Akademie’s targeted interest in the disciplines of art, design, the humanities and technology, the nationally accredited, non-profit University of applied Arts, Design and Media, positions itself as an innovative place of learning and research between a traditional art academy, a university of applied sciences and a department of humanities. The Merz Akademie was founded in 1918 by the architect and reform pedagogue Albrecht Leo Merz. State recognition of the then newly established, non-profit Merz Akademie by the state of Baden-Württemberg followed 38 years ago. Today, the University of applied Arts, Design and Media offers accredited degree programmes that are committed to both an advanced understanding of media authorship and the requirements of professional skills in the broad field between art and media technology.
