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Interview | interview
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Interview with MB, excerpt on »TABU I-IV« Steff Ulbrich: How do you develop the ideas? MB: In a broad sense my work may be considered as small pieces of handicraft which develop from actual situations. I pick them up spontaneously. »Handfest«, for example, belongs to those. That's a film where material had been accumulated, or archived. Of course, if you pick up a camera spontaneously and you film everything which you consider important or interesting, connections may arise between the single subjects after three years. Subjects you've been especially interested in. So that actually fits very well, it creates a film which makes sense by itself. »Tabu« is a similar example. But there are other things which I approach in a more conceptual way, especially episodic things, fragmentary. To me Super8 favors a fragmentary procedure. It is not script-writing, it is not about preparing a film for three years and then shooting it in 14 days. You collect your material with your handy camera. {...} Steff Ulbrich: What has been your goal with your 'Tabufilme'? MB: The »Tabufilme« do not state: what did Michael Brynntrup do on the 12th of May, 1989. But they are about what a diary is: does it include taboos? What is already predetermined by the diary medium? What are the conditions for diary writing? Do autonomous functions exist in the medium? And then there is another level. If you're doing a movie on the subject, where does that get you? Regarding content, it is clear, for example, that time, as it gets closer to now, gets more and more chaotic. Only in retrospect - let's say through history-things clear up somehow. In retrospect history gets catagorized into 'isms'. This has been the case in the »Tabu I-IV« films. These four diaries have been the given frame, a four-part form. The transitions and themes have been floating through all the diaries. And all the same threads run through all the films as well, though the main focus is changing. The »Tabufilm« is the confession - the attempt to get a hold on this chronological chaos by the means of form. And that is the reason why I structured the first diary under the main focus of the medical surgery. I have summed the second one up under another theme, general confusion and coming out. The third diary makes it clear that the »Tabufilm« is a film, just that, the single pages of the diary become animated, something is moving inside the diary itself; and in the fourth diary, a concrete situation is recorded as in screenplays. It's about the here and now with its long ending. So all this is pretty complex and interconnected. But I think that the statement as a statement is important, which is to try to model your life, and you'll find out that it always is a reduction, an illusion. You don't organize your life by means of a diary, you create a diary and your life as well, again and again. You do so by looking things up again and figuring out different focuses. And then you say to yourself; well, that time I was so and so and thank God it's over. But at the same time you figure out that there still is a piece left from that phase. And so the past stays alive in that you don't put it aside but keep on forming it. Your thoughts get relative and so does your inner urge and the fatefulness of all your actions. So now this is not an appeal for conscious breathing, but it is about what has been my circle of themes in the »Tabufilm«. Steff Ulbrich: But where is the provocative element if you want to present a taboo as a taboo? I don't expect you to solve your own taboos, but a least to touch them. MB: But come on, Steff! Now it's definitely your turn to name your taboos, the actual ones, here and now! Take my homosexuality for example. This has been a taboo for me in the past; today it's not, that's something I made clear in the »Tabufilm«. Steff Ulbrich: You presented your diary as a guestbook at the premiere party, but no one wanted to write anything in it. MB: Privacy is one of the last taboos. I wanted to confront people with it when I asked them to write something in my own diary. Finally it's always you who sets the taboos. They should have decided how far they wanted to go: to respect privacy or leaf through the diary or even write something in it. This play happened in front of a mirror. My work is never easy-going or purely sympathetic. Those who watch my movies always have to reflect on themselves as well. Take the example of this long ending. They realize that the movie isn't over yet, that there I am, sitting on a hard chair getting a sore butt. I drag them out of illusion, which every film creates, and out of fascination. I try to work on a structure which throws the people back to themselves. I don't offer figures of identification. The viewer can only identify with himself. Finally it's always about the audience being a single individual which has to deal with itself. Steff Ulbrich: So you would recommend to your audience that it's better for them to deal with themselves than to deal with your movies? MB: No. But I do think that if there is any positive effect arising from my movies, then it is the idea that people become aware about dealing with themselves. Steff Ulbrich: So you don't do entertaining movies. MB: Well, I don't want to do movies without edges, which will be forgotten in a minute, but films which require work while watching them. {-} So I don't want to make a statement here now, which you might answer somehow with arguments, and then this still would have to be discussed, and then we'll have to come up with a joint resolution. Not all that crap which somehow represents the stability of the whole system, but simply to point towards a region in every human being, in every subjectivity, where other things count besides words. Steff Ulbrich: Thank you. MB: You're welcome. (Interview with Michael Brynntrup, by Steff Ulbrich, printed in: BERLIN - Images in Progress, Contemporary Berlin Filmmaking, Edited by Jürgen Brüning and Andreas Wildfang, Hallwalls / Buffalo, 1989) . 
Interview | interview Steff Ulbrich, Interview mit MB, Auszug zu »TABU I-IV«, translated and printed in: BERLIN - Images in Progress, Contemporary Berlin Filmmaking, Buffalo, 1989 | ||