Biography
Johannes Girke, born in 1976 in Halle an der Saale, studied experimental film design at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). He held various jobs, including cinema projectionist, poster hanger, geriatric nurse, and courier, and gained practical experience in the film industry as a director's and editor's assistant at production companies in Berlin and Leipzig.
In the late 1990s he began to create video installations, film essays and short films, experimenting with the interaction between literature and moving images. Since the mid-2000s, he has also used experimental film techniques to explore processes of social change in works such as "Blindspiel - Szenen aus der demokratischen Republik" (2004).
Since 2018, Girke has also directed commercials and music videos and created artistic video works in public spaces. In 2020, he participated in the multimedia city walk "Unter freiem Himmel - Projektionen zu 30 Jahren Einheit und Umbruch", which consisted of video projections dealing with the (up)heavals of the past 30 years in the city of Greifswald as well as the expectations and disappointments of German reunification. He was involved in the feature-length documentary "Trust Me You're Lovely" (2022, directed by Julia Dittmann) and collaborated with the musician Theo Nabicht on the video projection "Circle in Line Project 23: Tokyo".
In the fields of digital storytelling and post-production, Johannes Girke is a member of the team at Heiko Aufdermauer's production company Silentfilm. Together with Aufdermauer, he co-directed the feature-length documentary "Berlin Bytch Love" (2022), about a young couple trying to transition from a life on the streets to a more stable existence due to an impending pregnancy. The film was nominated for the German Documentary Film Award, screened at several festivals and won Best Documentary at the Doc.Berlin festival. It was theatrically released in February 2024.