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Pressestimmen | reviews and articles

Free, Radical
by Maximilian Le Cain

The 49th Cork Film Festival, October 10-17, 2004


Like any substantial film festival, the Cork program presents an imposingly dense block of cinema out of which each viewer must carve his or her own micro-festival defined by the exigencies of taste, interest, appetite, free time, available money and even social pressures. Fortunately, year after year, personal taste has always been the decisive factor in governing my festival viewing choices. The reason that this is worth stating - or confessing - at the outset is that "my" Cork can sometimes exclude the Festival's more prominent offerings. My habitual avoidance of the much-hyped opening and closing night gala presentations pales beside my relative reluctance to attend the numerous Irish and International short film programs. Given that Cork's reputation is as a short film festival, it is arguable that this disinclination renders any account of the Festival I might put forward somewhat oblique. I gravitate toward the foreign language features, older movies and, especially, experimental film programs. More often than not these are abundant enough to smother any confused promptings of duty to catch up on the Festival's mainstream. Cork 2004, running from October 10 to 17, certainly left no time to succumb to such twinges, distinguished as it was by a welcome and commendable emphasis on experimental work. This was prominently announced by the presence of stills from an installation by Malcolm Le Grice on the program cover and a new section in it, the Free Radicals, to highlight the work of formally adventurous filmmakers like Michael Brynntrup and Mike Hoolboom.

If any reader found the unashamedly self-expressive tone of the above preamble objectionable, he or she would probably prefer to avoid Michael Brynntrup's »E.C.G. Expositus - the Broadcast and the Artistic Media« (»E.K.G. Expositus - die offentlichen und die kunstlerischen Medien«) (2003). At first glance - and, perhaps, at several subsequent glances - this self-devouring monster of a self-portrait may seem single-mindedly concerned with gleefully pushing the boundaries of unrepentant narcissism. Its dense structure frames within a promised fictional hospital drama (that hardly gets beyond one scene!) four complete short films Brynntrup completed in the '90s, fragments of other previous films, and footage of TV crews interviewing the filmmaker at his home. Rather than being a film about the omnipresent Brynntrup as a person, »E.C.G. Expositus« exhaustively explores the obsessive reproduction of images of the self, superficial and glib in themselves, both playful and unsettlingly claustrophobic in their seemingly endless variations and elaborations. The whole movie can be looked at as the extension of one of the shorts that it contains, »Heart.Instant/iation II (Self-Generated Manipulations)« (»Herzsofort.setzung II (autogene Manipulationen)« ) (1996), which follows an image of Brynntrup for over seven minutes as it is subjected to numerous alterations and manipulations by being passed through a variety of different media. This largely jocular interrogation of the image is carried through many of the intricate processes of doubling, repetition and sometimes subtle recontextualisation that he subjects his material to throughout »E.C.G. Expositus«. The result is a vertigo inducing audio-visual hall of mirrors, the subjects of which are Brynntrup's own voice, face and body.

In spite of the overall lightness of tone, an increasingly disturbing level of existential anxiety or even despair haunts this game of self-regarding excess. In at least overtly eschewing psychological or emotional depths and essentially reducing himself to an empty, endlessly manipulable image, Brynntrup already undermines the notion of three-dimensional human identity as a grounding central focus of experience. Instead he offers himself as an ornamental given subject to the generative regime of an elaborately baroque folly. And he is not the only sacrifice. Another of the older short films gobbled up by this vortex, »Loverfilm - An Uncontrolled Dispersion of Information« (»Loverfilm - eine unkontrollierte Freisetzung von Information«) (1996), is a rapid, 20 minute list of the director's past lovers, a dash through 20 years of gay history that matches names to images whilst slyly posing questions about both the viewer's right to be watching such a private document - one that pointedly includes invasions of privacy - and whether or not the images actually depict the people they are supposed to represent. On its own, this film could be taken at face value. Within the broader context of E.C.G. it becomes apparent that Brynntrup is reducing both his past and the men who peopled it to the status of almost emotionally meaningless elements in a manic media game - the same process through which he mediates his self-image elsewhere in the film. The lovers' specific identities are eradicated in favour of a simplistic image-function.

Yet all this willful capriciousness does have a very definite centre of gravity: death. It is most evident in another cannibalised short, »Aide Memoire - Gay Document for Remembering« (»Aide Memoire - ein schwules Gedachtnisprotokoll«) (1995), an unassumingly tender documentary in which photographer Jurgen Baldiga talks to Brynntrup about coping with AIDS. Baldiga's talking head is intercut with still pictures of him close to death (he died in '93) and apparently unstaged footage of a deranged alcoholic woman in Brynntrup's courtyard screaming threats and abuse at the filmmaker who is hiding, filming, in his flat. The sense of danger to Brynntrup that she implies is answered in the campy hospital scenes that open and close the film, in which Brynntrup is rushed into Accident and Emergency, his face completely disfigured. Not only is the ever-mutating narcissistic image superficial, it is also fragile. The scenes devoted to Baldiga are the statement of that fragility. They alone root the film in an emotionally resonant, lived-in reality but do so in highlighting its transience, a transience echoed in the grotesque hospital scenario.

(...)

Maximilian Le Cain is a filmmaker and cinephile living in Cork City, Ireland.

(http://www.sensesofcinema.com, Maximilian Le Cain - February 2005)


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monografischer Artikel | monographic review
Helmut Merschmann, "E.K.G. Expositus" (»E.K.G.EXPOSITUS«), epd-film, Das Kino-Magazin, April 2004
monografischer Artikel | monographic review
Axel Schock, "Alles dreht sich um mich selbst" (»E.K.G.EXPOSITUS«), Berliner Morgenpost, 15.04.04
monografischer Artikel | monographic review
Silvia Hallensleben, "Ich in Serie" (»E.K.G.EXPOSITUS«), Der Tagesspiegel, Kultur, 15.04.04
monografischer Artikel | monographic review
Stefan Volk, "E.K.G. Expositus" (»E.K.G.EXPOSITUS«), film-dienst, Nr.08/04, April 2004
monografischer Artikel | monographic review
Diedrich Diedrichsen, "Jeder Film ein kleiner Tod" (»E.K.G.EXPOSITUS«), die tageszeitung, Kultur, 16.04.04
monografischer Artikel | monographic review
Maximilian Le Cain, "Free, Radical" (Festival Report), senses of cinema, February 2005


Interview | interview
Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Interview zu »E.K.G.EXPOSITUS« am 05.01.04, veröffentlicht in: Katalog des 34. Internationalen Forum des Jungen Films, Filmfestspiele Berlin, 2004
Interview | interview
Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Interview on »E.K.G.EXPOSITUS« on 05.01.04, translated and printed in: Catalogue 34. International Forum des Jungen Films, Filmfestspiele Berlin, 2004

Interview | interview
Heidi Enzian, Fragebogen zur DV-Technik des »E.K.G.EXPOSITUS«, email Antworten vom 04.02.04; http://www.netloungedv.de/2004/EKG.html


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