Jörg Buttgereit is a German writer/director known for his controversialfilms. He was born in Berlin, Germany and has lived there his entire life. He is best known for his horror filmsNekromantik, Der Todesking, Nekromantik 2 and Schramm. In 1999, he directed an episode of the television seriesLexx, after a six-year absence from the entertainment industry. In 2013, Buttgereit announced that he would be teaming up with fellow horror directors Andreas Marschall and Michal Kosakowski to work on an anthology film called German Angst, in which each director would do one short. The film was released on May 7, 2015. Buttgereit's superhero character, Captain Berlin, was adapted into a comic book series in 2013. There is currently a comic book version of Nekromantik being made.
Early life
Buttgereit was raised in West Berlin while the Berlin Wall was still standing and the Allied Forces; Britain, France and America, each controlled a section of the Federal Republic of Germany. Hence, young Buttgereit went to the movie theaters to watch films from the aforementioned countries, he particularly enjoyed watching monster movies from the age of four. His grandmother bought him packs of Creature Featurebubblegum cards while he was in kindergarten and for his first Holy communion he received a Super 8 camera. Buttgereit has been experimenting with film since 1977. His first project was called Gags und Schwarzer Humor, a parody of TV commercials. Color Trip was created after his camera broke and the developers gave him back black, blank film. After scratching and washing the film, something blue, black and green came out of the projector. Klassenfahrt was a movie about his class in his last year at school. Stress was another version of Color Trip using another returned blank film. He claims his very first feature was called Interview with Frankenstein. The Exploding Sports Shoe was a two-minute film consisting of a sport shoe exploding in slow-motion. It was shown on TV as part of a documentary about punk rock, the original title was 'The Most Beautiful Destruction'. In 2012, speaking at the Leeds International Film Festival, Buttgereit said that he was happy working in stage and television production and cited internet piracy as a problem for low-budget filmmakers.
