Ula Stöckl

Ula Stöckl is a German feminist film maker and director, screenwriter and occasional actress.

She believes passionately that there should be more women exerting their influence in the film business. He was sent away to fight in the war, but survived. which would remain her principal source of paid employment till 1963. Between 1961 and 1963 she worked as a trilingual executive secretary. Between May and August 1963 she worked as an editorial assistant with the publishers DM-Verlag at Sandweier (at that time still just outside Baden-Baden, into which the little town has subsequently been subsumed).

Student In 1963 Stöckl enrolled as a student at the "Institut für Filmgestaltung" (loosely, "Institute for Making Films"), a department of the School of Design ("Hochschule für Gestaltung") which had been set up ten years earlier in Ulm, and which had built a reputation for its innovative approach to teaching. She was the first female student to be admitted to the course,

She produced her first film, "Antigone", in 1964 as part of her course, using a silent 35-mm Arri camera. Just seven minutes long, it is of necessity episodic, relating just a few of the key moments in the Greek myth on which it is based. Her graduation feature film, "Neun Leben hat die Katze" (1968: "The cat has nine lives"), subsequently acquired a cult status among supporters, seen by some as "West Germany’s first feminist film". These two productions identified the themes and set the direction for much of Stöckl's later work. It failed to go on general release when first produced due to the insolvency of the selected distributor, but subsequent critics and film scholars have nevertheless born witness to its enduring significance.

Film career In 1968 Ula Stöckl set up her own production company, "‚Ula Stöckl Filmproduktion". "Kübelkind" was part of a new wave of films from a younger generation of producers, often categorised as the New German Cinema genre.

In 1984 she returned to the cinema with one of her most acclaimed productions, "Der Schlaf der Vernunft" ("Sleep of Reason"). The themes were familiar, but by now she was working with a level of assurance and self-confidence which meant that critics were a little less inclined to challenge the various quirkinesses in the approach taken. Another important milestone in Stöckl's film career was "Das alte Lied" ("The old song"), one of the first so-called "Spielfilme" (loosely, "narrative films"), and appeared in 1992. While again revisiting her theme of conflict in human relationships, it also dealt with some of the themes arising out of reunification, and thereby touched on matters which at the time were preoccupying very many Germans. "Das alte Lied" was, and seems likely to remain, the last of Ula Stöckl's films for cinema.

Stage Ula Stöckl has only briefly involved herself with theatre. In 1974 she co-produced with Rainer Werner Fassbinder Strindberg's stage drama Fräulein Julie at the Theater am Turm in Frankfurt am Main. For one reason and another, the experience was not an entirely happy one.

Teaching Stöckl has undertaken teaching contracts for the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin and, in North America, at the venerable Hollins University in Roanoke VA. 1985: Film critics' prize for "The Sleep of Reason" 1985: Movie Silver Ribbon for "The Sleep of Reason" 1999: Konrad Wolf Prize for her life's work