Balagan
opens its 11th season with a mini-retrospective
of films by Matthias Müller,
a contemporary avante-garde filmmaker from Germany.
Matthias
Müller was born in 1961. While
studying art in his hometown university of Bielefeld
he met Christiane Heuwinkel and Maija-Lene Rettig,
two young and fledgling art students who would
soon turn their attentions to cinema. Together
they formed Alte Kinder (literally 'old children'),
a film collective and began borth curating film
events and makin films. As a curator, Müller
has organised such festivals as the "Found
Footage Film Festival" (1996 and '99),
the first German festival of autobiographical
films, "Ich etc." (1998). Müller's
films and videos have taken part in major film
festivals worldwide, including the festivals
at Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Rotterdam. His
work has also been featured in several group
and solo exhibitions. In 1994, he had a retrospective
at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His films
and videos are part of the collections of Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Museu d’Art
Contemporani, Barcelona, the Nederlands Film
Museum, Amsterdam, the Australian Centre For
The Moving Image, Melbourne, the Kunsthalle
Bielefeld, the Goetz Collection, Munich, and
Tate Modern, London.
The
Memo Book (Aus Der Ferne) 28 minutes,
s8mm on 16mm, 1989
"Müller's
virtuosic rephotography, editing and hand
processing techniques are hurled into an erotic
maelstrom, remaking the divisions of the Word
in a continual flux of inside and out, container
and contained. Learned in the tradition of
Eisenstein, Genet, Anger and Jarman, THE MEMO
BOOK seeks to remake the male body in a celebratory
flow of communion and despair, mythos and
logos. One of the great erotic works of German
cinema." - Mike Hoolboom, Independent
Eye
"Begun as a portrait of a former lover
who had died of AIDS, THE MEMO BOOK is as
much a self-portrait of the filmmaker, projecting
into his own mortal fears, fascination with
German romanticism, and his exorcising of
memory. A tender, magical and melancholy love
poem by an important new talent." - John
Gianvito
"Generally,
this excellent piece of work encompasses everything
and anything that one wants out of a cinematic
experience and can't be too highly recommended.
It is maximalism - sorely needed in our movie
going venues." - Warren Sonbert, Bay
Area Reporter
Sleepy
Haven 15 minutes, 16mm, 1993
"Matthias
Müller's SLEEPY HAVEN is explicitly taking
up the spirit of
Kenneth
Anger's FIREWORKS. SLEEPY HAVEN materializes
fantasies of an erotic daydream; the film
is a cocktail that merges Müller's own
shots and found footage like a love act. Nude
bodies of sailors are flaring up in flickering
solarization effects; they are given an ardent
aura of physical desire by this tattooing
of the film emulsion. Müller only gradually
changes his material metaphors to metaphors
of love.
"We
see huge ocean liners under steam docked in
the harbours; constant fade-ins and fade-outs
make the screen breathe heavily, open up and
close again.
"Circular
stops associate openings of the human body
....
"But
it is not only FIREWORKS the film is alluding
to; there is yet another classic shimmering
through Müller's imagery: Jean Genet's
Un Chant d'Amour." - Peter Tscherkassky
Scattering
Stars 2min, 16mm, 1994
Heavenly
bodies explode. Stars scatter. The after-glow
of a physical encounter.
"Against a pitch-black night-time sky,
splendid fireworks explode. From a different
darkness, gleaming male body parts light up.
Meticulous editing and solarisation make the
fireworks seem to emerge from the very center
of the human bodies." - Rotterdam Film
Festival
Home
Stories 6min, 16mm, 1990
It
is his found footage masterpiece, Home Stories,
that will forever bond Müller with fans
of that often abused genre; collecting the
most kitschy and colourful images of disturbed
housewifes in evening gowns from 1950s Hollywood
melodramas, Müller re-cut them into a
film that both comments on gender entrapment
in classic-era Hollywood while exhibiting
the sheer joy of image mutilation. (Michael
Arago)
