Films by Marja Burchard

Germany 2024, 82 min
by Narges Kalhor

SHAHID is a political drama and a desperate comedy at the same time. It is about historical heroes, today's criminals and how modern women deal with them. A story by and about migrants in Germany and from afar. SHAHID is a personal film that questions all kinds of radical ideologies – and doesn't always take itself too seriously.

Germany 2021, 52 min
by Rebecca Zehr

Does freedom only exist beyond your own parents' legacy? Marja took over for her late father at legendary Krautrock band Embryo. When she plays an instrument, she lives within the music. Carefully arranging sounds and images from both past and present, A SOUND OF MY OWN merges into a composition of its own.She first appeared on stage at the age of eleven with the legendary Krautrock band “Embryo”. Her father Christian Burchard founded the band in 1969 and led it until 2016. Today – in her mid-thirties – Marja Burchard is the bandleader in this project, which has become a kind of family for her. But what seems so simple and organic is far from self-evident in an extremely male-dominated sphere, as Rebecca Zehr shows in her precisely observed and designed film.This strictly and yet lightly composed melange mixes archival footage, psychedelic animation sequences and everyday observations of the normal life of a female musician between organisation and inspiration. With the visual level restricted to black and white and thus deliberately restrained, all the more attention is focused at the sound. The – who wonders? – outstanding score never takes the music for granted but works robustly with our perception. It’s the lucid, calm images and the narrative that is always anchored in the here and now that let this film stay incredibly haptic despite its concentration on our sense of hearing. Rebecca Zehr is not interested in portraying a musical legend, but in showing us what it could look and feel like to not only make music but live in it. [ Luc-Carolin Ziemann, 64 DOK Leipzig]