.

FILMTOUR FERNOST | Film Tour Far East
Oct 15th - Nov 24th, 2015

[ supported by the Goethe-Institute Vietnam
and the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) ]



Programm 1 | program 1
Werkschau Michael Brynntrup | Portrait Michael Brynntrup

[ 64-81 min | 1983-2011 | 7-10 filmvideo ]
(a varying selection of the following films will be presented at these different venues)

Wed, 21.10.2015, 19.30h - Beijing, Beijing Queer Film Festival (BJQFF)
Thu, 29.10.2015, 19.00-21.00h - Hanoi, Queer Forever! / Nhà Sàn Collective's Art Space
Sun, 01.11.2015, 15.00-16.40h - Hanoi, Hanoi DocLab / MiniDocFest
Thu, 05.11.2015, 19.00h-21.00h - Phnom Penh, Meta House
Sat, 14.11.2015, 14.00-16.00h - Saigon, Saigon International Film School
Fri, 20.11.2015, 19.00h-22.00h - Saigon, Sao La Art Center


UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL: MICHAEL BRYNNTRUP

Being used to a certain aesthetic presented in mainstream TV and cinema, people often find experimental short films strange and hard to digest. However the personal works of Michael Brynntrup, one of the most profilic German filmmakers working mainly on the underground circuit, are regarded as small jewels of cinematic culture that are very appealing and attract enthusiastic audiences.

Michael Brynntrup often performs the leading role in his movies. Yet his films are different than the films originating from an autobiographical filmmaking tradition in North America who use private lives as a form of artistic expression. When Michael Brynntrup exposes his subjectivity, it's not a one-to-one representation and he addreses always the human being in general. His films can be seen as experimental reflections of a narcissistic artist who presents himself as a man portraying himself to others who are supposed to recognise themselves in him.

"I see cinema, in essence, not as mass media, but as an individual experience that takes place in the mind of each viewer." (Michael Brynntrup) He leaves the audience to decide on the ambivalence of his work and to reflect on themselves while identifying with the exposed character in the film. As an experimental and independent filmmaker who sees his work as a medial self-reflection (film as metafilm) and working from a gay male perspective, he tries to direct his films to different contextual and technical limits. How well can reality be presented? What limits do morals and the media set? Despite his preoccupation with heavy existential themes of death and personal identity in his work, his vision is often ironic. He is able to integrate a personal diaristic strategy using humour and pathos to subvert, to create films which are both intimate and visually stunning.

(Tampere International Short Film Festival, catalogue 2004 - Maarit Jaakkola)
TODESSTREIFEN - ein deutscher Film
THE DEATHSTRIP - A German Film
9 min | 1983 | Super8 + 35mm | col | sound [MBCFILM#02]
(Dreifachprojektion) | (triple projection)
Between an overgrown West Berlin graveyard and a desolate stretch of land under communist rule, there is a supposedly dead no-man's land. - Around noon, the main character arrives at this inevitable place.
{Information sheet of the film, 1983}

At the start of 1983, Brynntrup joined forces with almost twenty filmmakers, artists, musicians, and others active in the squatter cinema movement to form the collective OYKO. [...] On July 17, 1983 in the Hasenheide park in Kreuzberg, OYKO put on their first public event: a five screen – better, a five bed sheet – open air projection of super-8 films accompanied by live music. Such an expanded cinema event was not untypical in the super-8 world, in which innovative and performative modes of film exhibition flourished.
(Marc Siegel, "Reflections on Arriving [...]", In: "West Berlin Film in the ‘80s", b_books verlag, Berlin, 2008)
DER RHEIN - ein deutsches Märchen
THE RHINE - A German Fairy Tale
12 min | 1983 | Super8 + 16mm | col | sound [MBCFILM#05]
(Heimatfilm) | (home movie)
Where I come from, people stay at home.
Except when they go on holiday or off to war.
{Information sheet of the film, 1983}

Some filmmakers, like Michael Brynntrup, blissfully ignore conventional technical limitations and expand the presentation possibilities for super-8mm. Brynntrup's single-screen »The Rhine, A German Tale« (»Der Rhein, ein deutsches Märchen«, 1983) is an ambiguous reworking of a home movie of a family trip which the filmmaker layers so that an uncomfortable equation is made between sentiment of nostalgia and the spirit of war.
(Berlinart, exhibition catalogue Museum of Modern Art, New York 1987 - Laurence Kardish)
HANDFEST - freiwillige Selbstkontrolle
HANDFEST - Voluntary Selfcontrol
18 min | 1984 | Super8 | col | sound [MBCFILM#10]
(Manifest) | (manifesto)
The identity is being denied.
On the very first take I wanted to pose naked in front of the camera. But I guess I didn't have the guts. - By the way, I took that shot by self-timer.
{Information sheet of the film, 1984}

Brynntrup here announces the theme that will run throughout his work--the dissolution of the original and individual via replication. In this film, an intertitle "Self-Portrait with Skull" announces a series of images of Brynntrup with mouth and eyes wide open; as each blowup draws us closer into his pupil we see a skull form and then disintegrate before our eyes, as if linking mechanical reproduction to death.
(Alice Kuzniar, "The Problem of Agency in the Digital Era: From the New Media Artist Michael Brynntrup to Run Lola Run", Rutgers German Studies - Papers Series, New Brunswick, NJ, 2003)
MUSTERHAFT - das Ende, ein Intermezzo
EXEMPLARY - The End, An Intermezzo
8 min | 1985 | Super8 | col | sound [MBCFILM#12]
(Privatfilm) | (private home film)
My apartment has a nice lay-out.
There are a lot of paintings on the walls. I have a big carpet, too.
{Information sheet of the film, 1985}

We watch him in his apartment, recognize him when, from time to time, he looks in a mirror with a camera. We see how he seems to live, among sheepskin rugs and pictures he painted himself, countless self-portraits on the walls and uncounted death's heads.
(Michael Höfner, translated by Constance Hanna, printed in: Lebende Bilder - still lives, catalogue MoMA, New York - Berlin, April 1992)
VERONIKA (vera ikon)
VERONIKA (vera ikon)
12 min | 1986 | Super8 + 16mm | bw | sound [MBCFILM#17]
(Trailerfilm) | (trailer)
The biblical prohibition of images word for word. God's life story in the form of a trailer: from zero B.C. to the Second Coming of Christ - coming soon.
{Information sheet of the film, 1986}

Brynntrup even went so far as to make a special promotional short for »JESUS« called »VERONIKA«. As well as raising theological questions on the Turin Shroud, »VERONIKA« divulges the best way to knock a nail through the hand; how to experience eternal mysteries anew, and that yes, He is coming "to this theatre - soon." - Still no joy with the Catholic church.
(Headpress Manchester, 3/91 - David Kerekes)
DIE BOTSCHAFT - Totentanz 8
THE MASSAGE - Death Dance 8
10 min | 1989 | Super8 + 16mm | bw | sound [MBCFILM#26]
"blind spot: term for a currently not reachable or visible space."
{Information sheet of the film, 1989}

Totentanz 8 returns to the figure of a young woman, perhaps the young girl from the very first film grown older. She climbs a V-necked stairwell, lighting on a birdcage stuffed with bird feathers before flinging them into an open courtyard. She appears again in an immense, emptied warehouse space, the image now rephotographed and solarized. She begins to dance through this fantastical silvery sheen, this veil of abandon. She recalls for us that death is also a place for celebration. Her frenzy spent, she rests in a large window opposite the skull, continuing to cast feathers. She takes up the skull and kisses it long and longingly with her tongue. Hers is a final embrace and acceptance, an eroticization of death, a romantic fury. In the end, in the film's sumptuous closing image, she casts feathers out the window in a storm of solarization, the light pouring through its aperture in a silver storm which suggests another world waiting beyond.
(Millenium Film Journal No. 30/31, Fall 1997 - Mike Hoolboom)
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)
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)
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)
MEIN ZWEITER VERS.
MY SECOND VERS.
10 min | 1993 | 16mm + UmaticHB | col | sound [MBCFILM#41]
(Videofilm) | (video film)
My first video take, - a film, that rhymes between the lines.
So, very good, very good. And... to that I really don't want to add anything else. That was -as you've just now seen- my first Video.
{Information sheet of the film, 1993ff}

»Mein zweiter Vers.« offers on the one hand an obsessive documentation of a trivial event, that is of his first video take, shot within the apartment in question. However it simultaneously also documents and examines the not-so-trivial assumption that the camera and its perspective can be conflated with the artist and his “voice,” for in this film three cameras and three different kinds of film stock or video material, which are all trained on this “trivial event,” compete for attention.
(Robin Curtis, "From the Diary to the Webcam: Michael Brynntrup and the Medial Self", In: "After the Avant-Garde [...]", October 2008)
ALL YOU CAN EAT
ALL YOU CAN EAT
5:30 min | 1993 | 16mm + 35mm | col | sound [MBCFILM#42]
(Kopffilm) | (head film)
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)
KAIN UND ABEL - eine Moritat
CAIN AND ABEL - A Moral
10 min | 1994 | 16mm | col | sound [MBCFILM#45]
(Lehrstück) | (instructional play)
A queerly provocative retelling of the Bible story about a man's bloodlust for his brother.
(Mix '95 New York, Festival Catalogue)

Taking imitation to profane heights, Brynntrup even has the male character Abel, played by Ichgola Androgyn, give birth to a baby (doll) out of his anus. Here all recourse to notions of biology and gender specificity is abandoned.
(Alice Kuzniar, "The Queer German Cinema", Stanford University Press, July 2000)
AIDE MÉMOIRE - ein schwules Gedächtnisprotokoll
AIDE MÉMOIRE - Gay Document For Remembering
16:00 min | 1995 | BetaSP + 16mm | col | sound [MBCFILM#46]
(Dokumentarfilm) | (documentary)
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)
HERZSOFORT.SETZUNG II (autogene Manipulationen)
HEART.INSTANT/IATION II (Autogenous Manipulations)
7:15 min | 1996 | BetaSP + 16mm | col | sound [MBCFILM#50]
(serielles Selbstportrait) | (selfportrait serial)
A medium is not an abbreviation that brings one thing to another, but rather a third added to two. A medium is not static, not a bridge, but develops a life of its own whenever activated.
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)
LOVERFILM - eine unkontrollierte Freisetzung von Information
LOVERFILM - An Uncontrolled Dispersion Of Information
21:30 min | 1996 | 16mm + BetaSP | col | sound [MBCFILM#51]
(Actionfilm) | (documentary love story)
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)
TABU V (wovon man nicht sprechen kann)
TABU V (About Which One Cannot Speak)
13:00 min | 1998 | 16mm | col | sound [MBCFILM#52]
(Tagebuchfilm) | (film diary)
About which one cannot speak, one must make films.
(loosely based on Ludwig Wittgenstein)
{Information sheet of the film, 1998}

TABU V plays with the medium of film in a light-hearted and inquisitive manner; a concentrated, intelligent and multilayered film in which wit is juxtaposed assuredly with profound, searching analysis.
(New York Film Academy Award - Best Short Film, Panorama 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)
ACHTUNG - die Achtung (concentration chair)
ACHTUNG - Respect (concentration chair)
14 min | 2001 | 35mm | bw + col | stereo [MBCFILM#56]
(Sensations- und Besinnungsfilm) | (sensation film)
There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.
(Immanuel Kant, Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, opening sentence)
Born in the body (...and in time...)
{Information sheet of the film, 2001}

Certainly even today some viewers will be affected by this work. Respect for the true art of filmmaking demanded that even the closeup be kept in, where a razor slices through an eye.
(Warning introduction to the German archival copy of UN CHIEN ANDALOU)
TV-X-PERM. (mein Schwulsein als Auftragsarbeit)
TV-X-perm. (Being Queer As A Commission)
3:20 min | 2002 | DV | col | sound [MBCFILM#57]
(TV Portraitfilm) | (TV film portrait)
My Gay Self-Portrait For Arte TV.
Being queer as a commissioned work.
Elastic Reality[TM] as program.
{Information sheet of the film, 2002}

Who is gay: the film, the film-maker or even both? Magnificent commissioned work.
(VIDEOEX Festival, catalogue, http://www.videoex.ch - May 2003)
BLUE BOX BLUES (die Inszenierung einer Fotografie)
BLUE BOX BLUES (Staging a Photo Shoot)
7:40 min | 2004 | DV | col | stereo [MBCFILM#63]
(Fotofilm) | (photo flick)
How long does a twinkling of an eye last...?
What all happens in a moment...?
Slap in a snap - a document of directing and a video on the half-life of still photos.
{Information sheet of the film, 2004}

In his contribution BLUE BOX BLUES, Michael Brynntrup sheds light on the difference between the illusionist gesture of photography and the production process itself.
(arsenal-experimental, Distribution note, January 2006)
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)
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)

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…”
(catalogue 56. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, February 2006)
FACE IT! (Cast Your Self™)
FACE IT! (Cast Your Self™)
4:00 min | 2007 | internet (DV) | col | sound [MBCFILM#69]
(Podcast Video) | (web2video)
Images from the private sphere of the world wide web. "The video has been removed due to its inappropriate nature". (Sat, 03. Mar 2007, YouTube | Broadcast Yourself™)

Under the pressures of a modern, highly individualized world, the engagement with the Self represents a never ending source for cultural production, from the literary diary of the 19th century to personal video clips on the internet. (...) Face It! (Cast Your Self™) consists of photographs collected from personal profiles of gay chat rooms on the internet. All images are self-portraits shot through mirrors, and in all of them the digital cameras hide the men's faces. Brynntrup's video, that was removed from YouTube due to its supposingly inappropriate nature, confronts its audience with the new privacy of the Web 2.0.
(Program notes 'Privacy issues, ...', curated by Florian Wüst, Impakt festival 2008)
IMAGEFILM_101010
IMAGEFILM_101010
1:35 min | 2010 | DV + flash | bw+col | stereo [MBCFILM#73]
(quadratischer Film) | (square film)
No Facebook! Just homepage.
A corporate video on the 11th anniversary of my website on the 'Digital Day', 10-10-10.
{Information sheet of the film, 2007}

TOTALE MONDFINSTERNIS ÜBER DEM MEER
Total Lunar Eclipse Over the Ocean
15:00 min | 2011 | HD (16:9) | col | sound (5.1) [MBCFILM#74]
(sphätherischer Film) | (surround film)
The earth as seen from the earth.
Weltanschauung in front of cosmic background radiation.
“As seen from the Moon, a lunar eclipse would appear as a solar eclipse.”
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mond - uptodate110401)

The film first seems to be antithetical to Michael’s other films, both aesthetically and in its content: no rapid sequences of images, no charged storyline, but an extended meditation, supported by an overwhelming soundscape.
(program notes directors lounge Berlin, June 2011 - Klaus W. Eisenlohr)
Solo City Zhuhai (BNURGB)
Solo City Zhuhai (BNURGB)
9:43 min | 2011 | HD (16:9) | col | sound [MBCFILM#75]
(Farbfilm) | (color film)
BNU Beijing Normal University RGB red, green, blue
{Information sheet of the film, 2011}

At 3.48 km², the campus of the Beijing Normal University (BNU) in Zhuhai is one of the largest, new campuses of Red China. However, a large part of the premises consists of green space. The sky over the campus is blue-gray. "The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rgb - uptodate110401)