Dietmar Brehm: Black Garden

Brehm, a photographer and artist as well as filmmaker, makes his films from old and discarded footage, ideally the sort that invokes some kind of erotic scenario.

From each of the films that make up his most ambitious project Schwarzer Garten (Black Garden, 1987-1999), Brehm collected a small selection of material and meshed the divergent images into perverse, semi-abstract, meditations on sexuality and violence. He edits the three or four different types of images (be it medical/scientific film, images taken from television, pornographic material or footage Brehm shot himself) together into an obscure matrix. The original images are distorted and degenerated. They are often overexposed and their grain enhanced through re-filming. Brehm re-films the footage in such a way as to create throbbing, pulsating images that visibly flicker at varying rates: an effect that he refers to as the “pumping screen”. The overall distortion allows for the seamless integration of footage from different sources.

-The Murder Mystery 1987/92, 16 Min,
-Blicklust 1992, 16 Min,
-Party 1995, 17 Min,
-Macumba 1995, 18 Min,
-Corridor 1997, 18 Min,
-Organics 1998/99, 17 Min,
Bonustrack: Interview Mit Dietmar Brehm 2000, 8:30 Min