Michal Kosakowski

Born in Szczecin, Poland, in 1975. Michal Kosakowski is the director, writer, producer, director of photography and editor of numerous short and experimental films, documentaries, video installations and 2 feature films. His work includes more than 100 films, many of which have been shown in international festivals and exhibitions, and have received numerous awards. Polish director Michal Kosakowski started making films when he was 10. By the age of 18 he had already directed and produced more than 20 shorts and developed his unique and controversial visual language with his first film production company Dark Productions. After graduating from the Academy of Commerce in Vienna in 1995, he studied film production at the Vienna Film Academy. From 1997 to 2000 he attended the artists' workshop Fabrica, the Benetton Communication Research Centre near Venice, Italy. This allowed him to develop his own film ideas in collaboration with the Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani. He also experimented with new ways of visual communication for several cultural, social and political institutions, such as the United Nations and The International Criminal Court. In 1998, he worked in North Africa as cinematographer for Mohammed Soudani's feature-length documentary film Les diseurs d'histoires (1998) and directed his film Holy War (1999), which explores the crossovers between Christmas and war. In 2000 Michal Kosakowski returned to Vienna where he continued his creative work in the commercial area as concept developer and film editor in the renowned agency DMC - Design for Media and Communication. In 2003 he founded the film production company nosugar added, focusing on documentaries, artist portraits, music films, commercials and experimental films, such as the award-winning Sleepers (2002) and Gipsy Express (2002). He also directed the short film Wait a Minute (2004) and the documentary The Heart of It (2004/2010) in collaboration with the Serbian writer Goran Mimica and the French writer Joseph Denize. In 2006 Kosakowski moved to Munich, Germany where he intensified his artistic collaboration with the Austrian artist and curator Uli Aigner. Their film projects, such as Ghostakademie (2005), Just Like the Movies (2006), Fortynine (1999-2007), The Inquisitive Museum (2010) and Ephemera - Uli Aigner by Michal Kosakowski (2018), were hosted by venues as renowned as the Kunsthalle Wien, Centre Pompidou Paris, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Kunstwerke Berlin, Städtische Kunsthalle München Lothringer13, C/O Berlin - International Forum For Visual Dialogues, The Rotterdam Film Festival, Kunstfilmbiennale Cologne, ZKM - Zentrum Für Kunst Und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, Museo National Centro De Arte Reina Sofia Madrid, Pierogi Gallery New York, Soho Centre Beijing, Museo da Arte Garrillo Gil Mexico City, Multiplicidade Rio De Janeiro or The Clair-Obscur Filmfestival Basel. Kosakowski's passion for music has triggered several music film productions with and about the MKO (Munich Chamber Orchestra), the violinist KP Werani and his string trio TrioCoriolis, the Dutch musician and musicologist Francis Kuipers, the Berlin drummer Steven Garling, the Viennese violinist Mosa Sisic and the New York electronic music artist Ray Sweeten. Since 2004 Kosakowski has been working with the Italian composer Paolo Marzocchi. For their experimental film Just Like the Movies (2006) about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Michal Kosakowski was given the award for best film and Paolo Marzocchi received the best original score prize by the international film festivals of Milan, Amsterdam, Santiago de Chile and Forli, Italy. The film was also acquired for the collections of the Library of the University of Amsterdam and the Danish Film Institute and is regularly shown at international symposia and film seminars. Just Like the Movies is also used as an instructional film by universities and academies worldwide. From 2008 to 2011, Michal Kosakowski was active as a lecturer, teaching experimental film and theory of film-making at the MD.H (Media Design Hochschule) in Munich, Germany. In 2011, he was Jury Member of the International Feature Film Competition at the Milano Film Festival, Italy. He also curated the film program for the concert event series TrioCoriolis - Hörblicke 21 in Munich. In 2015 he was a Jury Member at the Soundtrack_Cologne 12 - German Festival of Music and Sound in Film and Media, Cologne. Between 1996 and 2007 Michal Kosakowski created the video-installation Fortynine with more than 160 participants from 28 countries on the subject of murder fantasies. This resulted in Zero Killed in 2011 - his first feature-length film that received awards at numerous international film festivals. In 2015 his production company Kosakowski Films produced the anthology feature film German Angst, in which he directed his episode Make a Wish alongside legendary Berlin underground director Jörg Buttgereit and the Giallo expert Andreas Marschall. The film was sold in over 10 countries and shown at over 40 international film festivals such as the Rotterdam Film Festival and Sitges Film Festival. Since 2014 he has been creating art films, books and websites for the global art project One Million in which the artist and Michal Kosakowski's wife Uli Aigner is attempting to make a million numbered porcelain dishes before she dies. Kosakowski is continuously documenting this life-time project with his photographs. Since 2016 Kosakowski has been producing art films for artists, art collectors and art foundations such as the Kienzle Art Foundation in Berlin. For the German patron, scientist and benefactor Prof. Dr. Jörg Thiede Kosakowski digitized his comprehensive archive and created an artistic documentation of his Berlin Secession art collection in the form of photography, art film and interactive media. Kosakowski is also working on his film-exhibition-installation project Dark Tourism in which he examines the modern forms of commemoration of WWII and the Holocaust using 5 experimental and documentary films, several photo collage works/prints, room installations and book publications. Michal Kosakowski lives and works together with Austrian artist Uli Aigner and their 4 children in Berlin.