Michael Brynntrup | film video etc

Jim Thompson Art Center Saturday, 9th August 2008, 6 p.m. 6 Soi Kasemsan 2, Rama 1 Road, Bangkok 25.07. - 11.08.08 \| Südostasien Tour \| Tour in Southeast Asia

Werkschau | Films by Michael Brynntrup
single screen works: 6 FilmVideo | 84 min | 1990 - 2005

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]

DIE STATIK DER ESELSBRÜCKEN
THE STATICS - Engineering Memory Bridges
21 Min. | 1990 | 16mm | bw | sound [MBCFILM#32]
(Filmpuzzle) | (puzzle film)

Rests and tests from the inquiry into prototypes.
Formal proofs through pregnant experiments on one's own body.
{Information sheet of the film, 1990}

Test cards, doodlings, film techniques and visual experiments - the mechanics of film itself form the narrative of »Die Statik der Eselsbrücken«. And again, the result is hypnotic.
(headpress Manchester, 3/91 - David Kerekes)

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)

To ponder death is to ponder freedom.
Those who have learned to die no longer know to serve.
(Michel de Montaigne, from the essay 'Philosophizing Means Learning To Die')
{Information sheet of the film, 1993}

This is not the first time that Brynntrup has conceived a narrative that builds on a periodic return to points already traversed: his elegant Plotzlich und Unerwartet: Eine Deja-Revue (Sudden and Unexpected: A Deja-Revue) (1993), graced by the cult presence of Udo Kier, is a charmingly limpid exercise in looped time.
(Being Michael Brynntrup, http://www.sensesofcinema.com, July-September 2005 - Maximilian Le Cain)

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)

The ECG of metempsychosis (from the genes to the zodiac).
Electrographics of the 4th Dimension.
{Information sheet of the film, 1996}

»Herzsofort.Setzung« is under no cirumstances a mindless rehearsal of various mediaforms. In spite of different forms like Super8, CD-Rom, VHS-Video, colour copy or computer print, that are presented sometimes in an absurd manner, the single generation of the pictures are linked by the pleasure lying in - the uncertainty of the process, also in the formulation of the question. What remains from the transformed man after his bath in the media?
(Filmwinter, Festival Catalogue 1996 - Ulrich Wegenast)

The Hong Kong Showcase (eine Fallstudie)
The Hong Kong Showcase (a case study)
3:20 min | 2005 | DV | col | stereo [MBCFILM#64]
(minikino) | (micro movie)

“The world is everything that is the showcase.”
Living in a globalized world - a case study.
(loosely based on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, sentence no.1)
{Information sheet of the film, 2005}

The Emporio Armani shop window in Hong Kong is a small theatre of the global fashion industry. At night, a window cleaner sways across the stage, accompanied by classical Chinese music.
(http://www.idfa.nl/idfa_en_filmdescription.asp?filmid=27497, October 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). Since 2006 Professor for Film/Video at Braunschweig University of Art. - 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). Seit 2006 Professor für Film/Video an der Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig. - 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.