Biography
Johanna Pauline Maier was born in East Berlin in 1976; in 1985 she moved to what was then the Federal Republic of Germany. She studied philosophy and sinology in Berlin, Paris, Beijing and Munich as well as directing at the Beijing Film Academy. In 2001 she began studying at the Munich Academy for Television and Film (HFF) in the Documentary Film Department. During her studies she made short and long experimental, fiction and documentary films, for example a film portrait of the filmmaker Vlado Kristl ("Vlado Kristl - Ich bin ein Mensch-Versuch" / "Vlado Kristl: I am a Human Experiment", 2006, together with Markus Nechleba) and "Agnès Varda - die Kamera - und das Bildermachen" ("Agnès Varda – the camera – and taking an image", 2007). Maier's feature film "Die Schwärmer" ("The Dreamers", 2013), based on scenes from the play of the same name by Robert Musil, was shown at the Viennale in Vienna. Under the working title "Eine Reise um den Tag in 80 Ängsten", she started her HFF graduation film in 2015 which she completed in 2017 under the title "Voyages".
In 2018 Maier compiled documentary material that she had filmed almost 20 years earlier during her time in China: "Fragmente einer Reise nach China" was shown at the beginning of 2018 in the series "New Asian Cinema" at the Werkstattkino in Munich. In the summer of 2019, her HFF graduation film was released in cinemas, this time under the title "Un café sans musique c'est rare à Paris".