Martin Kirchberger was born in Rüsselsheim on 4th of April, 1960. He studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (HfG) (Hessen State University of Art and Design), mainly focusing on film and photography. He soon became a central figure of the local art and cultural scene in his hometown, where he founded the art group "Wendemaler" together with Uwe Wenzel, and where he was the drummer of the band "Kapitän Rüssel". Most notably however, together with Ralf Malwitz and Klaus Stieglitz, he co-founded the production company Cinema-Concetta that produced the trio's satirical short films (mainly pseudo-documentaries). Among them such works as "Schgaguler" (1988) about a farmer in South Tyrol, who harvests cucumbers in the snow and "Frankfurt fühlen" ("Feeling Frankfurt", 1990) about a massage therapist who can tell from his patients' tensions what city they are from.

On 22nd of December, 1991, during the shooting of "Bunkerlow", a short film about a promotional trip in a plane, Martin Kirchberger and his team including Malwitz and Stieglitz died in a plane crash near Heidelberg. Distracted by the film crew, the pilot had lost the orientation in the fog and the plane collided with a mountain. A total of 28 people died, only four people survived partly badly injured.

In memory of Kirchberger and his team, the Cinema Concetta film funding agency was founded in 1992. At the same time, Karin Malwitz, Renate Merck and Thomas Frickel (producer) completed "Bunkerlow". The film premiered in 1993 at the NoBudget Short Film Festival in Hamburg. In 1994, the Cinema Concetta film funding agency founded the Rüsselsheimer Filmtage, a two-day satirical short film festival. About 25 years after the tragic accident, filmmaker Thomas Frickel dedicated the documentary film "Wunder der Wirklichkeit" ("Miracles of Reality", 2015-2017) to his friend Kirchberger and the other victims. The film was awarded with the Hessischer Filmpreis and was released in German cinemas in May 2018.