The actors’ agent Doris Mattes dies
Katzelmacher was an initiation
Doris Mattes died on July 23, 2013, not long before her seventy-fifth birthday. As an actress, she was involved in the foundation of Munich’s action-theater (later the anti-theater), where in April 1968 she appeared in RWF’s production of Katzelmacher, playing the role of Gunda, a woman caught in a lower middle class, xenophobic, male-dominated world. In August 1969, she made her film debut in the same role. The film KATZELMACHER, which won the anti-theater ensemble Germany’s top film award and in which Mattes’ Gunda ‘manages’ Elga Sorbas’ Rosy, whose greatest dream is to become an actress, foreshadowed the role that Doris Mattes went on to play in real life.
As an agent, Doris Mattes was an important contributor to the careers of many well-known German actors up until 2008. On her time with RWF she wrote, “The enjoyment I felt working with Fassbinder, the action-theater and the anti-theater is something I still feel today. And therefore I also enjoy the fact that we and RWF live on through our collaboration and the films we made with him.”
Between 1969 and 1976, Doris Mattes also worked on GODS OF THE PLAGUE, WHY DOES HERR R. RUN AMOK?, FEAR EATS THE SOUL, BOLWIESER and the TV productions EIGHT HOURS ARE NOT A DAY and WORLD ON A WIRE.
Obituaries can be found on the pages of the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Agentur Mattes – Sonja Vogel
Photos: © RWFF