German experimental filmmakers

Rainer Werner Fassbinder (31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a West German filmmaker, actor, playwright, theatre director, composer, cinematographer, editor, and essayist. He is widely regarded as a prominent figure and catalyst of the New German Cinema movement.

Heide Hatry (born 1965) is a New York City and Berlin based German neo-conceptual artist, curator and editor. Her work, often either body-related or employing animal flesh and organs (cf: bio-art), has aroused controversy and has been considered horrific, repulsive or sensationalist by some critics, while others have hailed her as an "imaginative provocateur", "a force of nature..., an artist and a humanist who is making a selfless contribution to life", and an artist whose works provoke a "reaction akin to having witnessed a murder".

Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German film director and along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger was an early German practitioner of experimental film.

Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger (June 22, 1900 – January 31, 1967) was a German-American abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter, notable for creating abstract musical animation many decades before the appearance of computer graphics and music videos. He created special effects for Fritz Lang's 1929 Woman in the Moon, one of the first sci-fi rocket films, and influenced Disney's Fantasia. He made over 50 short films and painted around 800 canvases, many of which are in museums, galleries, and collections worldwide. Among his film works is Motion Painting No. 1 (1947), which is now listed on the National Film Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress.

Harun Farocki (9 January 1944 – 30 July 2014) was a German filmmaker, author, and lecturer in film.

Werner Nekes (29 April 1944 – 22 January 2017) was a German experimental film director, and a collector of historical optical objects.

Marian Dora (born 1970 in Southern Germany) is the pseudonym most commonly used by an anonymous German art director, cinematographer, actor, screenwriter, editor, producer, composer, assistant director, makeup artist, special effects/sound/camera/electricity technician, and set decorator/designer, anagram of his actual name, occasionally also credited under several other pseudonyms including Marian Dora Bolutino, Marian Dora Botulino, Marian D. Bolutino, M.D. Botulino, Marian D. Botulino, Art Doran, M.D. Bolutino, A. Doran, and Marian Dallamano.

Kommissar Hjuler (born Detlev Hjuler; 1967) works as a sound recordist in the field of Noise and Post-industrial music, visual artist, film maker and police officer at Flensburg, a town on the German border with Denmark. He often works together with his wife Mama Baer as Kommissar Hjuler und Frau. As self-taught artist he began making music in 1999 and visual art in 2006. He is considered to work in the field of neo dada, whereas his output also contains elements of fluxus, art brut.

Rebecca Horn (24 March 1944 – 6 September 2024) was a German visual artist, who was best known for her installation art, film directing, and her body modifications such as Einhorn (Unicorn), a body-suit with a very large horn projecting vertically from the headpiece. She worked in film, sculpture and performance; she directed the films Der Eintänzer (1978), La ferdinanda: Sonate für eine Medici-Villa (1982) and Buster's Bedroom (1990). Horn lived and worked in Paris and Berlin.

Michael Brynntrup (born 1959) is a German experimental filmmaker and media artist living in Berlin. Besides experimental films and video installations, his better-known works also include electrography, digital art and internet art projects. Since 2006 he has been Professor for Film/Video at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig.