VON INNEN, VON AUSSEN (Albert Sackl, Austria, 2006, 16mm )
TIE Review: "Von Innen, von Aussen is a wonderfully unnerving, scrutinized, study of the human body within the context of its environment. The film opens with an empty apartment set in motion, revolving around a fixed point. This introduces the kinetic fixation that Sackl explores thoroughly within the film, the revolution. Implications of the revolution within man's own self image and man's historic worldview seem to be the larger conceptual concerns of the work.
"The revolution is then applied to man, himself, where Sackl plays out in a score of variations on the theme. At first, we see an unidentified nude male subject revolving clockwise on his central axis in front of a black background. It is evident that the backdrop is part of the apartment, but it clear that Sackl intends it to be an empirical environment for one portion of his study. Sackl then sets the revolving man in motion back and forth across the face of the backdrop. Sackl continues his formal investigation sending the revolving man back and forth in space. The next major development is that the image splits and we view the man in stereo. The two men's revolutions are synchronized at first, then each takes on his own timing and direction.
"At this point the viewer could easily define the film as simply a visual analysis of the male figure in highly ordered motion, but then Sackl presents the environment as variable. Suddenly, the black background is lifted and anonymous natural background is presented. The landscape is initially vacant, but the spinning man soon enters stage right and makes his way back and forth, revolving all the while. The film soon cuts back to the black background where more variations are played out, the most noteworthy being the superimposition of the man's front and back. The visual biomorphism is totally bizarre. Throughout the remainder of the film, the environment continues to shift between the apartment, natural landscapes and the black backdrop. In the end, the empiricism of the blackened space is beautifully tainted by rays of sunlight that are projected onto the scene from a window behind the camera.
"Ultimately, the film has a truly meditative quality, a meditation that encompasses our notions about our bodies and the rules that govern it, both environmental and self-imposed. The precision of the filmmaking is overwhelming, in a way that is echoed in the movements of the male model. Something within the tight order applied to the man's body brings to mind the iconic work of Leonardo de Vinci, which imposes perfect geometries atop the human form." -Noah Manos, TIE
HUSKS (David Ellsworth, USA, 2002, 16mm)
Description: As an experimental landscape portrait of rural Iowa life, Husks explores past and present visions of how people and rural landscape interact. Husks includes a mix of 16mm and optically printed super-8 film.
TRIPARTITE (Casey McGuire, USA, 2006, 16mm)
Description: Tripartite evokes an uncomfortable emotion between the viewer and the abstracted body. By creating scenarios that are poised between dream state and reality, this film presents a figure that is struggling for control over her body.
SELEKTION (Dietmar Brehm, Austria, 2006, 16mm)
Description: In Selektion Dietmar Brehm compiled trailers of German sex films from the late sixties and early seventies to create a short study of shame and the eye. At both its beginning and conclusion a person leafs through a photo album, and Brehm leafs through his found footage in a similar way.
TIE Review: "In her excellent book Offensive Films, Mikita Brottman defends Cannibal Holocaust, Blood Feast, Faces of Death, and other notorious shockers in her argument for a cinema of the body. In Selektion, Dietmar Brehm dutifully jerks off to Brottman’s academic manifesto and throws it in the Trash. Jettisoning most any apparent sense of coherent linkage or thematic development, Brehm’s film is a hyper realization of 60s exploitation’s constant interest in naked or at least half-clad female bodies and *gulp* watching those bodies get thrown around or beaten. No consistent characters or apparent narrative, just a spliced-together collection of found B-movie footage exhibiting numerous scenes of old school glamorized misogyny. The soundtrack is creepy in a pre-Texas Chainsaw Massacre sort of way as well with what sounds like humming theremin complimenting the buxom black & white beauties on screen. Combined with the constant and eerie flickering of the imagery—an effect created when Brehm re-shot the footage that he had found—Selektion is a convincing slice of peeping tommery and a degenerate’s sticky-floored idealization of everything that’s right about voyeuristic cinema. Why connect the scenes of nudity and violence with context or dialogue if all anyone wants to see is the nudity and violence? Hell if I know. But if Brehm’s film is a grindhouse purist’s back alley fantasy, it’s also a pretty subversive genre critique. By lifting away any veil of psychological motivation or aesthetic intent, Selektion reveals exploitation for what it is: a laughably shabby collection of impotence-inspired vicarious cruelty. But slavish homage and tongue-in-cheek satire are never far removed anyway. So choose your poison: self-satisfied critical distance or back row indulgence." - JT Rogstad, TIE
PENG PENG (Dietmar Brehm, Austria, 2006, 16mm)
Description: Peng-Peng ist die found footage Konstruktion zweier Szenen, die durch
die Aufnahme eines gekippten Sessels getrennt ist. Peng-Peng beginnt
mit einer düsteren Waldaufnahme.
Die erste Szene wird von einem Mann im Profil dominiert, der einer, am
rechten Bildrand kaum wahrnehmbaren Frau etwas sagen will, aber immer
wieder durch Blitze unterbrochen wird. Dann erhebt sich eine nackte
Frau aus einem Sessel. Im Gegenschnitt verschwindet die an den
Bildrand gedrängte Frau, quer durch das Filmbild gehend, während sich
die nackte Frau wiederum aus dem Sessel erhebt.
Gekippter Sessel.
In der zweiten Szene sieht man, in frontalen Großaufnahmen,
abwechselnd die gesichter meiner zwei found footage-Darsteller: "Hey
Joe" - der Mann mt dem starren Blick (aus "Organics", 1999) und "Oh!
Jim" - der Typ mit dem Zahnstocher (aus "Verdrehte Augen", 2002).
Zwischen die in sich wiederholenden Blickfolgen von Hey Hoe und Oh!
Jim sind kurze Szenen montiert, die Fleischstücke, einen Wichser,
einen vollen und leeren Suppenteller, einen Kuss, einen weiblichen
Rückenakt, Finger, die eine Möse streicheln, eine klaffende
Operationswunde und eine Penetration zeigen.
Am Filmende abrupt die Waldszene des Anfangs, jetzt in strahlend
schönem Wetter. Ein Flugzeug durchfliegt den blauen Himmel ...
Als Basiston hört man immer wieder das Wählen und das ins Leere Läuten
eines Telefons, unterlegt mit Straßenlärm, Hundebellen, hallenden
Schritten und Kirchenglocken.
MEAT PACKING HOUSE (Eduardo Darino, Uruguay, 1981, 16mm)
Description: "This film presents an overview of the process on meat packing in Uruguay."
STILL (Tim Leyendekker, Netherlands, 2004, 16mm)
Description: Two male teenagers make their first date through a telephone dating service. The filmmaker went back to the exact same place where he had his first sexual encounter 16 year's ago.