.

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

Queer Forever! / Nhà Sàn Collective's Art Space

(October 29, 2015)

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



"Queer-as-Queer-Can"
Werkschau Michael Brynntrup | Portrait Michael Brynntrup

[ 80 min | 1989-2010 | 8 filmvideo ]

Thu, 29.10.2015, 19.00-21.00h - Hanoi, Queer Forever! / Nhà Sàn Collective's Art Space, 1 Luong Yen Str., 15th floor, Hanoi Creative City Building


Michael Brynntrup has been a vital and very active part of the German underground over 30 years, having completed numerous experimental features 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!!, Vancouver - Alex MacKenzie)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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}

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)