Michael Brynntrup | film video etc

FILMTOUR FERNOST \| Film Tour Far East Oct 15th - Nov 24th, 2015 Sao La Art Space Saigon (November 20, 2015) [ supported by the Goethe-Institute Vietnam and the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) ]

QUEER ĐÂY | HERE & QUEER – Werkschau Michael Brynntrup | Portrait Michael Brynntrup

[ 80 min | 1990-2010 | 7 filmvideo ] [curated by Dang Bui]

Fri, 20.11.2015, 19.00 - 22.00h, Saigon, Sao La at The Observatory, 5 Nguyen Tat Thanh, Q4, HCMC

Selbstverortung – German word with specific regard to the self pertains to the relevance that our placement in space and time has for our being, our ‘situation’. Through the process of Selbstverortung, one can gain understanding of one’s bearings.
Some individual identity and existential experience, like experimental arts, can too be entities that come across as strange, taboo even, to the mass media, or collective thinking. Through various media of aesthetics, the work of Here and Queer’s artists channel not only the artists’ own perspective and relevance in their subjects but also transmit visibility of those negligible subjects to the majority. It thus can evoke apperception of the lesser-known groups’ existence amongst the mass – the regards to Selbstverortung.
“There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience” (sypnosis of Michael Brynntrup’s ‘Achtung’ by Immanuel Kant, Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason)
(Program note by Dang Bui)

(A community activity organized by Sao La and Dang Bui to bring visibility to minor groups with different-from-the-norm preferences. Please consider the distinctive nature of the films and artwork for your and everyone’s comfort. We do not tolerate discrimination in any kind. Featured Artists: Michael Brynntrup, Thanh Nu Mai, Xuan Ha)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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}