The German experimental filmmaker and director Lutz Mommartz (*1934) died in Düsseldorf on 26 July 2025 at the age of 91. For over five decades, he shaped the German film and art scene with a radically different understanding of film. Mommartz stood for “the other cinema”, beyond the mainstream, with the aim of establishing film as a means of artistic expression.
In 1975, he was appointed the first professor of film at the Kunstakademie Münster (then a branch of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) and headed the film class until 1999. The film class was significantly linked to the creation of the Filmwerkstatt Münster.
Two filmmakers and producers – and former students of the Münster film class – remember:
As one of the first members of the Filmwerkstatt, and at the time workshop leader for film and video at the Kunstakademie Münster, I remember well the eventful years that led to the founding of the Münster film group.
In 1978, Lutz Mommartz was appointed to the then “Institute for Art Teachers at the State Academy of Art in Düsseldorf”, where he founded the film class with a group of active students.
When the first exams were due, it became clear that not all of them necessarily wanted to work as art teachers in schools, that they saw their future more in the medium of film, but that when they left the film class, the production resources of the art academy would no longer be available for further projects.
It was then Lutz Mommartz, on whose initiative, together with interested students, it was considered how an infrastructure for the realisation of film projects could be developed and established in the media diaspora of Münster.
It quickly became clear that in order to apply for funding from the city of Münster and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, an association had to be founded.
The advice of Lutz Mommartz, a former civil servant of the city of Düsseldorf, was extremely helpful.
In 1981, the non-profit organisation “Filmgruppe Münster e.V.” was founded, to which the city of Münster gave the first floor of the “Pumpenhaus”.
This building is a sewage pumping station that was opened in 1903 and replaced in 1975.
A dispute arose in the city council over the use of the old building. A citizens’ initiative wanted to set up a communication centre in it, a solution that was too expensive for the city and obviously politically suspect.
It propagated a concept as an “artists’ house” and looked for groups who wanted to work there.
This is where Lutz Mommartz came into play. He managed to get the newly founded “Filmgruppe Münster e.V.” to move into rooms in this pump house and was also allowed to use the large pump hall as a studio for the film group’s projects.
The Pumpenhaus was later renovated by the Münster Theatre Initiative (T.i.M.) and taken over – except for the rooms of the film group.
In 1981, Lutz Mommartz and the first generation of students at the Kunstakademie Münster laid the foundations for today’s film workshop and a lively media scene in Münster that is still active today.
Dieter Fietzke
How Lutz Mommartz became a film professor
First of all, Lutz was a fun guy who had a gift for convincing others that they were doing the right thing. We film students had a couple of years where a lot happened; successes, but not by any standard. Five to ten students travelling in a boat, but without a view of the real shore, not knowing if they were making progress. And the helmsman…?
Lutz Mommartz was an administrative employee of the city of Düsseldorf who was an Eulenspiegel in the local art scene in his spare time. With his 16mm Bolex camera, he would suddenly get up close and personal with people or throw them up in the air during the shoot. His irreverent approach to the medium won him a film prize at the renowned experimental film festival in Knokke, Belgium. – At that time (early 70s) there was a rumour among left-wing art students in Düsseldorf and Münster that they needed a mouthpiece for political finger-pointing. The professors in Düsseldorf thought the request was too frivolous and assigned the task to the Institute for Art Teachers in Münster. The venerable academy had a branch there for school art.
One of the applicants for the advertised position was Adolf Winkelmann, who presented a film version of a booklet love story in which the aristocracy did not fare well. The sarcastic work appealed to the students, but not to the artist-professors. That’s where Lutz came in. Professor Hans-Paul Isenrath took the city administrator aside and advised him to show the Brumküsel film ‘Selbstschüsse’ and the Brumküsel film ‘Markeneier’. There you can see up to 30 eggs, which Lutz sets spinning with a nimble hand. As far as I can remember, the five-minute soundtrack consists of a dense carpet of the word ‘egg’. It was indeed funny and a success.
I was the first student to join the newly founded film class. Four semesters of painting were over and I had learned with a Super 8 film that you could hold the audience for the duration of the screening – unlike with pictures that you walked past. Sitting alone with a professor on a disused sofa in a shared flat didn’t sit well with me though. We also didn’t have a workload to work through. In my distress, I persuaded four fellow students to come here for a guest semester. As film theory was now being proclaimed as the educational focus with concentrated student intellectual power, Lutz asked what we recommended reading? “Siegfried Kracauer: Theory of Film. The Salvation of External Reality”. This book helped us all get through our studies. It’s just a shame that it wasn’t Lutz who suggested it.
Professor Lutz Mommartz had a fixed duty rota. He arrived at 10 a.m. and had to leave for the train at 2 p.m., because his home was always Düsseldorf. The sudden exclamation “I have to go to the train!” has also been included in some films as an essential twist. But until then, he was there for everyone, watching and listening to everything. He thus became a crystallisation point where projects grew that were not his, but which would never have come about without him. The class community films are unique to this period of study. I don’t think there were any projects like that before or since. “Why don’t you make a dance film” could be an initial sentence and then we got started. “Mambo” became the project, which I fed with a pile of children’s and teen records from my youth. It gives me a twinge today when I read that this film appears in Lutz’s list of authors.
The professors at an art academy are not icons in whose footsteps you want to follow, but you can see how talent and perseverance determine a life path. However, some move in a maelstrom that pulls others along with them. This can also move a student forward. Lutz Mommartz’s path perhaps ran along a mirror in which the companions were only visible from 10:00 to 14:00.
In memory of the teacher of the film class at the Institute for Art Teachers at the Düsseldorf State Academy of Art.
Wolfgang Braden
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