.

The 11th XPOSED International
Queer Film Festival Berlin


19th - 22nd May, 2016




Werkschau | "The Michael Brynntrup Experience"

[  116 min  |  1987-2016  |  10 filmvideo  ]

Programm 1 | program 1
Thu, 19.05.2016, 23.00h - Südblock - Opening Party
Programm 2 | program 2
Fri, 20.05.2016, 22.00h - Cinema Moviemento 1


The Michael Brynntrup Experience

This year's homage is dedicated to Berlin filmmaker Michael Brynntrup. XPOSED is very pleased to be able to show ten of his films in the first two days of the festival. Since the early 1980s he based in Berlin, constantly creating fascinating moving images that pushed the boundaries in terms of narrative and form. His films often deal with breaking taboos by exposing the extreme in order to fathom the limits of freedom. Legendary Berliner "Polit-Tunten" BeV Stroganov, Tima die Göttliche or the unforgotten Ovo Maltine populate Brynntrup's idiosyncratic film worlds. Godfather death is also a frequent visitor in the filmmakers oeuvre, often materialized and represented through a skull or other phantasmagorical Gestalten. Next to his fictional and experimental works, you will be able to find strong autobiographical works, as well as very intimate and personal portraits of friends and companions. Brynntrup constantly addresses the cinema space and it's spectator in it, by playfully engaging with it and by breaking down the boundaries of the conventional cinema experience. In this spirit, come to the cinema and explore the "Michael Brynntrup Experience"!
(The 11th XPOSED Int'l Queer Film Festival Berlin, xposedfilmfestival.com - uptodate160504)


Die diesjährige Hommage ist dem Berliner Filmemacher Michael Brynntrup gewidmet. XPOSED freut sich sehr, zehn seiner Filme während des diesjährigen Festivals präsentieren zu können. Seit Anfang der 1980er Jahre lebt und arbeitet Brynntrup in Berlin und begeistert mit seinen formal wie inhaltlich grenzüberschreitenden Arbeiten. Dabei bricht Brynntrup immer wieder mit Tabus und stellt das Extreme in seinen Filmen aus um die Grenzen der Freiheit sichtbar zu machen und auszuloten. Legendäre Berliner Polit-Tunten wie BeV Stroganov, Tima die Göttliche oder die unvergessliche Ovo Maltine bevölkern Brynntrup’s idiosynkratischen Filmwelten. Auch Gevatter Tod ist ein immer wiederkehrender Besucher im Oeuvre des Filmemachers, der oftmals in Form eines Totenschädels oder anderen phantastischen Gestalten reflektiert wird. Neben seinen fiktionalen, experimentellen Arbeiten finden sich auch stark autobiografisch gefärbte Werke, sowie persönliche dokumentarische Arbeiten in seiner Filmographie wieder, in denen er enge Freunde und Weggefährt*innen portraitiert. Brynntrup spielt immer wieder mit dem Kinoraum und seinem Publikum, welches er kontinuierlich adressiert und zu seinen Kollaborateuren macht. In diesem Sinne, kommt ins Kino und freut Euch auf die “Michael Brynntrup Experience”!
(Katalog The 11th XPOSED Int'l Queer Film Festival Berlin - Mai 2016)



Programm 1 | program 1

[  21 min  |  1989-1991  |  2 filmvideo  ]

Thu, 19.05.2016, 23.00h - Südblock - Opening Party


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)



Programm 2 | program 2

[  95 min  |  1987-2016  |  8 filmvideo  ]

Fri, 20.05.2016, 22.00h - Cinema Moviemento 1


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)
OHNE TITEL
UNTITLED
6 min | 1987 | Super8 | col | sound [MBCFILM#19]
(Widmung) | (a tribute)
Photo, film, and TV images from September 22nd, 1981. Corner of Potsdamer Strasse and Bülowstrasse. (This film is dedicated to Klaus-Jürgen Rattay).
{Information sheet of the film, 1987}

Ohne Titel (Without Titel) - Early September: High noon of the squatters movement, last movments of Klaus-Jürgen Rattay. Chased by the police he dies under the wheels of a bus. The pictures remain, what else.
(catalogue International Super8-Festival Leicester, November 1987)
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)
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)
DER HIERONYMUS - Totentanz 6
THE HIERONYMUS - Death Dance 6
7 min | 1989 | Super8 + 16mm | col | sound [MBCFILM#25]
"Gravediggers: species of beetles, black, live off cadavers of small animals, which they roll into balls."
{Information sheet of the film, 1989}

Totentanz 6 returns out of doors. Shot in a high weeded field, a gnome-like figure picks his way through a flourishing vegetable life until arriving at the ubiquitous skull, now covered over with swarming flies. He rubs his face against it in a gesture of sympathy, replaces an eye, and picks out the bloody entrails which remain in its cavities. Obsessively he begins to clean it, to try to restore it to a pure skeletal state, to separate it from its life as meat, but is unable to do so. Frightened, he flees, the skull now reappearing in a crimson overlay haunting his departure, threatening his every movement. Forced to return, he forms a kind of flesh altar around the skull, acceding to its demand to partake of this world and the next, before clambering up a nearby tree and waiting, frozen against the afternoon sky.
The skull's traditional bone-on-bone iconography signals for the gnome its separation from the natural world he inhabits, signals perhaps a destination or afterlife quite apart from this one. But this acceptance, this pact between worlds is broken when he is confronted by the specter of finality inhabiting his traditional haunts, his home. The skull's sudden appearance disrupts his customary traversals, its lingering entrails enjoining the meat of this world to embrace its demise in the next. In the end his negotiation is less acknowledgment than submission, unable to muster a cosmology which can embrace the skull's join of meat and bone.
(Millenium Film Journal No. 30/31, Fall 1997 - Mike Hoolboom)
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)
SELFENCODING
selfencoding
2:12 min | 2016 | HD (+GIF) | bw+col | stereo [MBCFILM#79]
(maschinenlesbarer Film) | (computer generated film)
Bye-bye, bits and bytes: I mathemetized myself into the digital codes.
{Information sheet of the film, 2016}

QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response Code) is an optical label that contains information arranged in a square grid on a white background, which can be read by an imaging device (such as a camera, scanner, etc.) (en.wikipedia.org)