Marieli Fröhlich is an Austrian filmmaker and screenwriter.
She developed her passion and informal training for film at an early age in the Österreichisches Filmmuseum, the cinemathèque her father Peter Kubelka founded in Vienna.
After attending the Lycèe Francais, she moved to Paris to assist photographer Guy Bourdin and was scouted by Claude Chabrol to co-star in Phantomas (1979) with Helmuth Berger.
The following year, she went to New York to mentor Jonas Mekas, worked as an actress while studying at the Lee Strasberg Institute. Through Mekas and meeting Ken Jacobs, Martin Scorsese, Andy Warhol, Peter Beard, Stan Brakhage, Jack Smith & others she was inspired to become a director herself.
1990 Her first film, Vesna was screened in the Tokyo Film Festival, bringing attention to European clients & her first TV-commercial won the Young Talent Award in Cannes Advertising Film Festival.
Other awards followed, including the 1992 Cannes National Award and Mobius Award, her work gets published in Lürzer’s Archives, won several Effie Awards, Art-Directors Club Austria Awards, nominations for Cannes Lions, Cresta, Clio, New York, London, Montreux and Hollywood (1990’s-2023).
2018 Screenplay feature film M wie Mädchen, funded by BMKOES
The 2019 premiere of ongoing experimental short film/concept STOP premiered at This Human World Festival, Vienna. Their media campaign incorporated STOP for the posters & borrowed the title STOP as their 2019 themed Motto for announcing the festival. STOP has toured numerous festivals, winning 8 awards and 14 nominations. Amongst a golden REMI at Houston international Film Festival and best experimental at Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center. Fröhlich in an interview:“My inspiration as a filmmaker for STOP may appear as poetic or an abstract film, but is more than thuggish at the service of recognition of the universal need for connection across all types of divisions within our world population.”
Fröhlich was commissioned for “Lo Querkopf” as the writer and director of a short film, which premiered at the annual Art Director’s Club Awards, (ADC) Hamburg, 2020.
2020 Gestern Heute Übermorgen, scipt writer documentary with Peartree productions Vienna/Paris, funded by BMKOES.
In 2021 Fröhlich became the second woman to be invited as an honorable member of Creative Club Austria (CCA).
In 2023 Fröhlich’s curatorial project, “Gertie Fröhlich Schattenpionierin/(In)visible Pioneer” a retrospective opened at the MAK. Austrian and international press coverage are highlighted by Der Standard, WHITEHOT MAGAZINE NY, ORF, and Falter, amongst others.
“Was ist Denn Los? Kunst im Leben von Gertie Fröhlich”, writer and director of the documentary, funded by BMKOES; Shot and edited in Austria and Slowakia.
“Was ist Denn Los?” is both about re-addressing gender inequity in the Post-War intellectual Avantgarde art world, & intellectual restitution for the artist Gertie Fröhlich, through over 20 interviews with her contemporaries, an important oral history of the Austrian Art and the artist.
“Nomi” Co-writer, director. A musical drama in development about the performer Klaus Nomi, the self-taught LGBTQ mezzo-soprano who was the first artist to die of AIDS.