The Visual Worlds of Jonatan Briel
In 1982, the U.S. film industry trade magazine Variety noted that few German directors were capable of handling pathos, among them Jonatan Briel: “Indeed, he is the best.” The reviewer was particularly enthusiastic about Glutmensch (1975), a film about the playwright and poet Friedrich Hebbel, told through a complex flashback structure featuring colorfully tinted references to silent and experimental films, queer camp aesthetics, and visually striking horror visions. It is Briel’s final completed film in a body of work that is as limited as it is unique.
Jonatan Briel was born on June 9, 1942, as Karl Dieter Briel. He died on December 26, 1988, in Berlin at the age of just 46 from complications of AIDS. In Holzminden, his hometown, Briel founded a youth film club as early as 1960 and screened international art films in the Lower Saxony countryside. Influenced by these cinematic images, he was one of the first to successfully apply in 1966 to the newly founded Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB), where he completed his studies three years later with the Kleist film Wie zwei fröhliche Luftschiffer. The precisely staged film, shot in stark black-and-white imagery, intertwines the final days of Heinrich von Kleist with the present-day context of 1968. The film is well received at festivals both in Germany and abroad and is sold to television. Within a year, three more equally experimental works are produced for ZDF’s Kleine Fernsehspiel series: Berlin, Berlin, Berlin (1970), Jonatan Briel’s Lenz: A German Physiognomy (1971), and Tago Mago (1971). Meanwhile, Briel is already working on a “German Trilogy” that began with the Kleist film, in which he portrays Friedrich Hebbel and Friedrich Hölderlin as two writers with tabooed, suppressed, or repressed homosexual feelings. In contrast to the exuberant color film Glutmensch, the project Untertänigst Scardanelli is intended to be a film of light, featuring “Hölderlin as a romantic idol for the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll generation” (Briel). Following in the footsteps of his previous films, Briel once again aims to create a visually spectacular fusion of classic literature and topics relevant to today’s world. However, this project remains unproduced, just like the treatment for Das Geheimnis and the screenplay for Die doppelte Fremde, two projects intended to explore contemporary queer themes.
The retrospective The Visual Worlds of Jonatan Briel is conceived as a comprehensive survey of his work. In addition to completed films, it features readings and discussions of unrealized projects as well as radio plays that Briel recorded in the 1980s. Furthermore, the series explores cinematic influences and personal connections, such as his friendship and collaboration with DFFB classmate and cinematographer Skip Norman.
Additional screenings will take place from August 30 to October 18, 2026, at the Bundesplatz-Kino, where photographs of his work and portraits will be on display in the lobby. To accompany the film series and exhibition, SYNEMA (Vienna) will publish Die Bilderwelten des Jonatan Briel. The overall project, curated by Frederik Lang, Maja Roth, and Thomas Keller, is taking place in cooperation with the Deutsche Kinemathek and is supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
Frederik Lang, Maja Roth
