Elfi Mikesh

Elfi Mikesch (b. 1940) is an Austrian cinematographer, filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist whose work has been central to New German Cinema since the 1970s. After training as a photographer, she moved to Berlin in the 1960s, where she became part of the city’s vibrant independent film scene. She collaborated as cinematographer with filmmakers including Werner Schroeter, Rosa von Praunheim, Monika Treut, Teresa Villaverde, Harald Bergmann, and Lilly Grote, developing a distinctive visual language that seamlessly merges dream and reality, documentary and fiction.

Mikesch made her feature directorial debut with I Often Think of Hawai (1978), which received the German Film Award. Since then, she has directed more than twenty-five works spanning feature films, documentaries, experimental cinema, and video art. In 1984, she co-founded the production company Hyena Films with Monika Treut, producing films that became landmarks of queer and independent cinema.

Alongside her filmmaking, Mikesch has worked extensively as a cinematographer, photographer, and educator, teaching at universities while continuing to expand the possibilities of cinematic image-making. Her work has received numerous international honours, including the German Film Award for Execution – A Study of Mary (1980), the Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival (2014), and the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Film Prize (2010). Today, her films remain celebrated for their poetic, sensual, and visually groundbreaking style.