Michael Brynntrup | film video etc

"A MILLION DIFFERENT LOVES !?" queer film festival + conference 18. - 22.10.06 - Lódz, Polen 25. - 29.10.06 - Leipzig, Deutschland 18th - 29th October 2006

Werkschau | Queer Films by Michael Brynntrup
(6 film/video | 72 min | 1991 - 2005)
Samstag, 21.10.2006, 23:00h, Kino Charlie, Lodz
Samstag, 28.10.06, 22.30h, UT Connewitz, Leipzig (Auswahl)

Michael Brynntrup has been a vital and very active part of the German underground over 15 years, having completed numerous experimental features (including the Super8 feature »Jesus - der Film«...) and an incredibly strong body of short personal works. Working from a decidedly queer bent, Brynntrup often integrates a personal diaristic strategy, using humour and pathos to subvert and stimulate while creating films which are both intimate and visually stunning.
(The Blinding Light!!, program notes, Vancouver, Fall 1999 - Alex MacKenzie) [more] [deutsch]

NARZISS UND ECHO
NARCISSUS AND ECHO
14 Min. | 1989 | 16mm | bw | sound [MBCFILM#30]
(Rätselfilm) | (riddle film)

Long seemed invalid the Prophet's word, - But honored it was, - By the outcome at last: - How odd the maddness, how strange a death! (Ovid, Metamorphoses)
{Information sheet of the film, 1989}

Brynntrup creates his own rococo version of the classical myth of Narcissus and Echo, a story of longing, love, and self-love. Brynntrup comments "A film in the form of a riddle is a special kind of entertainment film whereby the film's content must be deduced from the film's formal structure."
(Information The Museum of Modern Art Department of Film, 1992 - Karen Lund)

LIEBE, EIFERSUCHT UND RACHE
LOVE, JEALOUSY AND REVENGE
7 Min. | 1991 | 16mm | col | sound [MBCFILM#35]
(Lehrfilm) | (educational film)

Du weißt ganz genau, daß jetzt viele Länder Filme in ihrer Sprache herstellen ... (Original mit Untertiteln). - You know that every film has its own language ... (subtitled original)
{Informationsblatt zum Film, 1991}
You know very well, that nowadays many countries produce films in their own language ... (original with subtitles).
{Information sheet of the film, 1991}

The witty »Love, Jealousy and Revenge« explores the mobile meanings of language in film with the help of sophisticated telecommunications; an aural/oral offering.
(Hygiene and Hysteria Tour Program, UK 1994 - Sarah Turner, Ian Rashid)

Using found footage from the early 70s porn films, Michael Brynntrup creates a humorous and titillating moving collage of mediated erotic imagery - one that keeps promising the viewer always anticipated cum shot, as well as asking the question, "How 'graphic' does an image have to be before it comes pornographic?"
(Mix '95 New York, Festival Catalogue)

»All You Can Eat« by Michael Brynntrup takes the 'cum-shot' to new heights with a montage of some of the wildest, orgasmic, facial expressions ever composed to a mellow, easy listening sound track.
(Boys On Film No.6, cover text, dangerous to know 1996)

Photographer Jürgen Baldiga (1959-1993) and filmmaker Michael Brynntrup, - privat discourses and personal investigations of how to deal with images of life and death.
{Information sheet of the film, 1995}

»Aide Mémoire«, a 16-minute short, is decidedly not a documentary about Baldiga's life and work. Twice Brynntrup visits his friend at home, who is sick with AIDS, to ask a few informal questions and to get him on tape. This "Gay Document for Remembering" ("Schwules Gedächtnisprotokoll"), as Brynntrup subtitles the film, is full of gaps: it reproduces few of Baldiga's photographs and mentions only a couple of dates from his life, one of which is his death in December 1993. This reticence, even omission, makes the photographer's life seem all the more transient and the loss that much more poignant.
(Alice Kuzniar, "The Queer German Cinema", Stanford University Press, July 2000)

This film is based upon true occurrences. Any resemblance to individuals, dead or alive, is not only intentional, but unavoidable. - The viewer is also responsible for images made public. - Excerpts from my Diary and the relevant books of German law.
{Information sheet of the film, 1996}

Noted German experimental filmmaker Michael Brynntrup tantalizes us with his diaristic account of his many lovers. What seems at first to be an extended exercise in ego, gradually becomes a powerful social record of gay life in the years spanning gay liberation and the aids-crisis.
(Best Experimental Work / New Screen Section, Images Festival of Independent Film and Video Toronto 1998)

NY 'NY 'n why not
NY 'NY 'n why not
4 Min. | 1999 | 35mm | col | stereo [MBCFILM#53]
(Musikfilm) | (music film)

WALK / DON'T WALK / WALK. The rhythm of the nineties.
A music stroll along Christopher Street.
{Information sheet of the film, 1999}

The Jury Award is in recognition of the exceptional quality and diversity of gay and lesbian German films in this year´s Berlinale. Beginning with the inspiring selection of »AIMÉE & JAGUAR«, the first lesbian film to open the Berlinale; to (...) »NY 'NY 'N WHY NOT«, these five German films brilliantly represent the gay and lesbian community and the talent of German film-makers on the world stage.
(Special TEDDY Award 1999, International Berlin Film Festival PANORAMA)

DAS OVO (Ovo - das Video)
THE OVO (Ovo - the Video)
16:30 min | 2005 | DV | col | sound [MBCFILM#65]
(Video Hommage) | (video homage)

"It's not about how a drag queen moves,
it's what she sets in motion."
(Ovo Maltine, 16/04/1966 - 08/02/2005)
{Information sheet of the film, 2005}

Christoph Josten was Ovo Maltine. She died on 8 February, 2005 at Berlin’s Auguste Viktoria hospital, eleven weeks after suddenly being diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. She had lived with the HIV virus for 13 years. “Ovo (the egg)” – read one obituary – “ lay down in Berlin’s nest of queens and brooded on a number of political projects: a hotline for gay victims of assault, Act Up, AIDS benefit events, the legalisation of marihuana, the recognition of prostitution as a profession, transgender visibility…” For: “How a queen moves is not as important as what she moves.”
(catalogue 56. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, February 2006)

Michael Brynntrup
Short-Biography

Born in Münster, Germany, 1959. Studied in Freiburg, Rome and Berlin. Master degree Fine Arts at the Braunschweig School of Art in 1991. Experimental poems, texts, paintings, fotography, fotocopies, performances, installations and exhibitions since 1977. Over 60 experimental short films and videos since 1981, four feature films. Digital art in interactive media since 1995 (CD-ROM and internet).

Film exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art New York (1987, 1992 and 1999). Numerous international exhibitions and film awards. Organisation of avantgarde and gay film events for museums, institutions and international film festivals. Publications on Super8 and Off-Off-Cinemas. Since 1990, workshops, project advising and apprenticeship counselling in the area of media production and film (eg. at Beijing Normal University Zhuhai/China). - The artist lives and works.

Personal notice: As an independant 'experimental' film-maker who sees his task in particular in a medial self-reflection (film as metafilm) I try to lead films in all its different forms to contextual and technical borders. (And naturally I make the viewers come along to these borders). I comprehend film in its essence not as a mass media but as an individual experience which takes place in the head of each viewer.

Michael Brynntrup
Kurz-Biografie

Geboren 1959 in Münster/Westfalen, Studium Kunstgeschichte und Philosophie in Freiburg und Rom. Seit 1982 in Berlin, 1987-91 Studium Freie Kunst (Filmklasse der HBK Braunschweig), 1991 Meisterschüler. Diverse Künste und Copyart seit 1977. Über 60 Filme und Video (davon vier Langfilme) seit 1981. Digitale Künste in interaktiven Medien seit 1995 (CD-ROM und internet).

'Film exhibition' im Museum of Modern Art New York (1987, 1992 und 1999). Zahlreiche Werkschauen, viele Filmpreise, Organisation und Präsentation von Experimentalfilm-Reihen im In- und Ausland. Stipendiat des Kunstfonds e.V. Bonn (1993) und des Kulturfonds Berlin (2002). Publikationen zu den Themen Super-Acht und berliner Off-Off-Kinos. Seit 1990 Workshops, Projektbetreuung und Ausbildertätigkeit im Bereich Medienproduktion. Gastdozenturen für experimentellen Film und interaktive Medien (u.a. an der Beijing Normal University Zhuhai/China). - Der Künstler lebt und arbeitet.

Persönliche Anmerkung: Als unabhängiger 'experimenteller' Filmemacher, der seine Aufgabe vor allem in einer medialen Selbstreflektion sieht (Film als Metafilm), versuche ich, Film in allen seinen Erscheinungsformen an dessen inhaltliche und technische Grenzen zu führen. (Und selbstverständlich nehme ich den Zuschauer immer mit an diese Grenzen). - Ich begreife Film in seinem Wesenskern nicht als Massenmedium, sondern als individuelles Erlebnis, das sich vor allem in den Köpfen jedes einzelnen Zuschauers abspielt.