8 SUPER VOILENT FILMS (Thorsten Fleisch, Germany, 1993-1997, Super 8)
TIE Review: " Super Violent Films is a small anthology of Fleisch’s early work in Super 8mm. Despite the blunt nature of the title, many of the films contain more nuanced implications concerning the nature of violence in society and in art. Each film has a unique stylistic and formal approach to the subject including: Claymation, found imagery, stop frame animation, and something that mimics a home movie. The collection as a whole is an exciting look at a filmmaker’s growth from his early filmic explorations to work that sets the stage for his award winning 16mm films, Bloodlust and Skinflick."
1. Untitled: In a simple Claymation, Fleisch distills violence to its most total and most horrific form, the homicide. The film, entirely devoted to the act itself, presents an interesting twist. An omnipotent hammer smashes both the victim and the perpetrator leaving us to wonder about the role of divinity in ongoing practice of human violence. A lighthearted humorist tone relieves the grim nature of the subject.
2. Guten Appetzugler: This short has the air of a didactic medical school film, complete with sterilized surgical gloves. A mouse is disemboweled and the meaning of the title is revealed.
3. Untitled(People Keep Asking Me ‘Bout My Influences: In the form of a visual montage, Fleisch presents a grotesque array of violent images from both “low” and “high” sources. En masse, the images comment on the pervasiveness of violence in our cultural representations, in a way that leads us to consider their influence on all of us.
4. High Tech Heimwerker: The first of two films in the collection where Fleisch acts as the perpetrator of violence. The victim, in this case, is technology. An array of high-tech devices disintegrate beneath Fleisch’s crashing and smashing. The film could be assessed as a Luddite’s call to arms, but the filmmaker employs high tech “weaponry” in his attack.
5. Untitled: Fleisch turns his aggressions on the camera in this short film. The eerie effect is that the camera assumes the first person point-of-view, implicating the viewer as the attacked. The hazy images of the film become more and more haunting as the optics of the camera break down under Fleisch’s forceful blows.
6. Eiskalt: Perhaps the most chilling work in the retrospective. The film portrays the benign pathos of an amateur home movie, the record of a winter holiday. Darkness quietly shatters the lighthearted pastoral scene.
7. Untitled: The final work of the film presents a wonderful visual marker in the career of the artist. The film synthesizes subject matter explored in Fleisch’s later work. The film acts as both a handsome bookend for the retrospective, and as introduction to Fleisch’s “mature” work.
8. FistFire: This incendiary film exhibits Fleisch in the masochistic act of setting his own fist aflame with the aid of common lighter fluid. The burn is short lived, but one can certainly imagine the longevity of the odor. -Noah Manos, TIE
MOTHER (REVISED) (Luther Price, USA, 2002, Super 8)
VASECTOMY (Jason Wade, USA, 2006, Super 8)
Description: The film of my VASECTOMY, shot on super 8, filmed by my old
lady Saira Huff.
INTROSPECTION PART 1 (Frank Biesendorer, USA, 2004-2005, Super 8)