26/71: Cartoon - Balzac and the Eye of God

26/71: Cartoon - Balzac and the Eye of God

1971 · 1 min · ★ 5.5 · Animation

Zeichenfilm - Balzac oder das Auge Gottes is a play on the idea of trick film. And trick film it is. The 30-second work is shown twice in case the viewer missed something the first time: in crude hand-drawn animation Zeichenfilm ... evokes the scatological sado-masochistic actions and performances of Otto Muehl and Günter Brus which Kren filmed during his second period. In Zeichenfilm Balzac a male figure hangs himself, achieves a monstrous erection and ejaculates into a woman's mouth. She in turn hangs herself; he enters her vaginally then anally. Finally, she defecates on the left side of the frame wherein appears an eye of God while on the right in a cartoon box the words "Aber Otto" ("But Otto") materialize, a comic reference to Otto Muehl.

Directed by Kurt Kren

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26/71: Cartoon - Balzac and the Eye of God

43/84: 1984

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43/84: 1984

43/84: 1984 · 1984

Kurt Kren recorded the last television debate in the Reagan/Mondale election campaign. In the viewfinder, the television filled the entire picture, but the viewfinder did not match the lens entirely so that the television screen in the picture was very little. That was not the plan, but Kren decided to "adopt" the film in the end.

Satisfaction

Satisfaction · 1968

Four men, one woman and a cat in a room. The men drink and discuss. Things get a bit violent. The masochist acts out his desires by himself. Random fuss and sex occurs. Suddenly the woman gets her baby to change diapers. Odd things around the child. The cat gets abused. This is Otto Muehl going Fassbinder.

23/69: Underground Explosion

23/69: Underground Explosion · 1969

23/69: Underground Explosion

A report about an Underground Festival on tour through Germany and Switzerland.

39/81 Which Way to CA?

39/81 Which Way to CA? · 1981

39/81 Which Way to CA?

Kren on his way from Vermont to California. Kren says that his various cars are the thread which runs through the story. (Hans Scheugl)

10/65: Self-Mutilation

10/65: Self-Mutilation · 1965

10/65: Self-Mutilation

MovieDramaHorror

Kren’s 10/65 Selfmutilation is developed from a Gunter Brus “action”. What the film emphasizes is the surrealistic drama of symbolic self-destruction that Kren drew out of Brus’ action, pacing out each gesture so that one gets a tense, iconoclastic revelation of a man covered in white plaster lying surrounded by razor blades and a range of instruments looking as if they have been taken from an operating theatre. The blades, scissors and scalpels are gradually inserted into him in a ritualistic self-operation. (Stephen Dwoskin)

37/78: Tree Again

37/78: Tree Again · 1978

37/78: Tree Again

At the center are takes which do not change - a tree in a field in Vermont, U.S.A. Since the film was shot over a period of fifty days, the single frame shots create a storm of pictures.

7/64: Leda and the Swan

7/64: Leda and the Swan · 1964

7/64: Leda and the Swan

Based on a Muehl Happening. The almost convulsive use of juxtaposition reappears here, but the captured gesture assumes a more erotic sensitivity, though the "action" itself was primarily a gradual destruction of the erotic.

10b/65: Silver – Action Brus

10b/65: Silver – Action Brus · 1965

10b/65: Silver – Action Brus

"Action" by Günter Brus. At first Kren did not want to show the film, because the image is underexposed. A copy of the negative material turned out to be better than the original material and so Kren did show the film. The film's title relates to Brus' use of silver paper for his action.

The 120 Days of Bottrop

The 120 Days of Bottrop · 1997

The 120 Days of Bottrop

An eccentric homage to the Rainer Werner Fassbinder days of German filmmaking.

6/64: Mom and Dad (An Otto Mühl Happening)

6/64: Mom and Dad (An Otto Mühl Happening) · 1964

6/64: Mom and Dad (An Otto Mühl Happening)

In the first action he filmed, 6/64 Mama und Papa, Kren’s editing leads to many interlocking continuous shots; central takes recur like a leitmotif, circular motion and networking can be observed throughout the film. Kren painstakingly weaves the fury in front of his camera lens into dense geometrical figures. Shot/countershot sequences alternate, lumping back and forth between single (!) frames, they turn the Actionist turmoil into ornaments, rigid geometrical patterns, the equivalent in time to what Mondrian used to distill on canvas in space. (Peter Tscherkassky)

Exit... But No Panic

Exit... But No Panic · 1980

Exit... But No Panic

MovieActionCrime

A guy having sex with a woman on a rooftop – just to get her coffee-machine.

The Lascivious Wotan

The Lascivious Wotan · 1971

The Lascivious Wotan

A subversive and experimental film by Otto Muehl.

Scheiss-Kerl

Scheiss-Kerl · 1969

Another try by the Viennese actionists around Otto Mühl, trying to shock the middle-class bourgeoisie with all sorts of explicit sexual and excretory processes.

Becoming Otto

Becoming Otto · 2010

MovieDocumentary

A portrait of the Austrian avant-garde artist Otto Mühl/Muehl (1925-2013), whose work combined sex, violence, gastronomy and bodily effluence with unbridled abandon.

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Part 3

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Part 3 · 1993

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Part 3

On the 28th of October 1884 Daniel Paul Schreber, candidate of the National Liberal Party in Chemnitz, suffered a heavy defeat at the elections of the German Reichstag. He was taken up in the mental clinic of the Leipzig University soon afterwards. To his rehabilition he wrote an extensive piece of work, "Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken" (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness), which was published in 1903 and led to his temporary dismissal. Hereby Schreber became the most quoted psychiatric patient in scientific literature. The third part was realized by Peter Tscherkassy based on a concept by Ernst Schmidt Jr.

Amore - Aktion mit einem Masochisten

Amore - Aktion mit einem Masochisten · 1968

Amore - Aktion mit einem Masochisten

An experimental and bizarre shooting of an association between the sexes.

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