Kurt Kren
Nacimiento : 1929-09-20, Wien, Austria
Muerte : 1998-06-23
Historia
Kurt Kren was born in 1929 in Vienna, Austria from a Jewish father and a German mother. From 1939 till the end of World War II, Kren lived in Rotterdam, where he was sent to with one of the Children's Transports. In 1947 Kren returned to Vienna, and his father provided him a job at the National Bank.
He began making films in 1957. 2/60 48 Köpfe Aus Dem Szondi -Test (1960) was his first serial film and 3/60 Bäume Im Herbst (1960) confirmed this structural orientation. He realized in the 1960s his most famous films with the Viennese actionists, where his skill of short film blossomed. In 1966, he took part in the « Destruction in Art Symposium » organized by Metzger in London. In 1968 he visited the USA for the first time, showing his films in New York and St. Louis. This very year he became a founder of the Austria Filmmakers Cooperative. After a participation in a happening "Kunst und Revolution" ("Art and Revolution") at the University of Vienna in 1968, Kren's films were confiscated and he was fired from the National Bank. He participated in 1970 in the International Underground Film Festival (London) and in 1971, in the Cannes Film Festival. He then moved to Cologne for five years. Retrospectives were set up by the London National Film Theatre in 1976 and the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1979. He was also involved in the Dokumenta 6 of Kassel in 1977.
From 1978 to 1989, Kren lived in the USA and presented lectures for universities and schools. He did many jobs such as security officer in the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Within this period he made his bad home movies as he used to call them inspired by his travels across the country. He finally returned to his native Vienna in 1990. He died from pneumonia in Vienna in 1998.
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.
Director of Photography
An eccentric homage to the Rainer Werner Fassbinder days of German filmmaking.
Self
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.
A homage to the Austrian experimental filmmaker Kurt Kren, his two films "1000 Years of Cinema" and "Snapspots" and his way of working; and that with a slight wink.
Director
Kurt Kren records snapshots of visitors to Vienna who are photographed in front of the statue of Johann Strauss Jr.
Director
The making of pictures becomes the central issue in itself in that, with an analytical single-picture procedure, picture-taking tourists on Vienna's St. Stephen's Place are captured and their faces animated to a dance.
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.
Director
A commission by Austrian TV station ORF documenting the anniversary celebration for Kunststücke.
Director
Kurt Kren short
Director
"It became easier to understand Kren's method of approaching film when he illustrated his matter-of-factness with a story: he was asked to shoot and deliver a film, for a festival, given four day's notice, which he did ('foot'-age shoot'-out'). He normally takes a long time with a film; this one he terms a "rape." He removed his name and copy-right from the piece. "Probably my last film." I asked whether he'd ever seen a print. "Yes, it's great," he replied..." (April Rapier)
Director
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.
Director
"In 1983, I got a job as a museum attendant and abandoned film-making entirely. And so the question arose: "no film?," and the conclusion I came to was: no film. Question mark." (K.K.)
Director
The third of the "bad home movies". Kren moved, along with his Thunderbird from New England in winter to the warmth of Texas. Part of the film was shot in Austin. (Hans Scheugl)
Director
Kren on his way from Vermont to California. Kren says that his various cars are the thread which runs through the story. (Hans Scheugl)
Director
Kren in New Hampshire, New England. Together with friends he lived from the demolition of wooden houses and sale of the wood. Kren was the "nail puller". (Hans Scheugl)
voyeur
A guy having sex with a woman on a rooftop – just to get her coffee-machine.
Director
'It was in San Francisco at a punk festival. I was already high and the air was so thick in the rooms that you could cut it with a knife. I had a photograph camera with me; I stood in a corner of the entrance hall and took 36 pictures on slide film. At home I put the slides into a slide projector. I took out the lens and filmed the slides by filming directly from the projector - using single frames according to a certain plan.'
Hans-Peter Hochenrath and Birgit Hein made a documentary film about me for the Saarland Network and wanted me to make a self-portrait. Instead of pointing the camera lens away from myself, I pointed it toward myself. I rewound the film over and over again so that multiple exposures were produced, while I was repeatedly fading in and out.
Director
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.
Director
Hans-Peter Hochenrath and Birgit Hein made a documentary film about me for the Saarland Network and wanted me to make a self-portrait. Instead of pointing the camera lens away from myself, I pointed it toward myself. I rewound the film over and over again so that multiple exposures were produced, while I was repeatedly fading in and out.
Director
Kurt Kren short
Director
I took a photograph of the view out of the window and had a very large negative made from it, which I fastened to the lens hood attacement in front of the camera. I tried to bring the negative into alignment with the real landscape which I could see through the camera. Then I filmed for months, changing the focus from near to far and then back again. (K.K.)
Director
This film shows, with the use of single-frames, Kren's diary-like notes from 1968 to 1976, especially his entries about the work on the three previous films. At the very end a fragment of a failed first attempt of Keine Donau (No Danube) is shown. The coffee company can also be seen, which has given the film its name.
Cinematography
A meadow, a lake, the silhouette of a hill, trees. 21 days of the same view in Saarland. 21 days with five different cut-outs in a mask before the camera, which finally reveals a complete panorama. The landscape changes with the advancing seasons and becomes slowly delirious in its technical alienation.
Producer
A meadow, a lake, the silhouette of a hill, trees. 21 days of the same view in Saarland. 21 days with five different cut-outs in a mask before the camera, which finally reveals a complete panorama. The landscape changes with the advancing seasons and becomes slowly delirious in its technical alienation.
Director
A meadow, a lake, the silhouette of a hill, trees. 21 days of the same view in Saarland. 21 days with five different cut-outs in a mask before the camera, which finally reveals a complete panorama. The landscape changes with the advancing seasons and becomes slowly delirious in its technical alienation.
Himself
In a TV film about the film Casablanca, Kren is meant to read aloud three letters that Groucho Marx wrote to Warner Bros., because they wanted to take legal action against him over A Night in Casablanca. The recorded material could not be used on television and was meant to be destroyed. Kren found it and showed it uncut with its repetitions.
Director
In a TV film about the film Casablanca, Kren is meant to read aloud three letters that Groucho Marx wrote to Warner Bros., because they wanted to take legal action against him over A Night in Casablanca. The recorded material could not be used on television and was meant to be destroyed. Kren found it and showed it uncut with its repetitions.
Director
A man's head is seen in silent close-up using single-frame shooting and time exposure.
Director
Kren shows the cinema (mentioned in the title) during and after film presentations. He uses single-frame and time exposures 5 to 30 seconds long. Sometimes sunlight comes through the open door into the theater changing the colors in the film remarkably. Black spots appear when the lights inside the cinema are turned off. The film is uncut and was recorded with a shoulder tripod over a period of three weeks.
Cinematography
A subversive and experimental film by Otto Muehl.
Director
Kurt Kren short
Director
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.
Himself
"This film is an attempt in focusing. I visited Kurt Kren in Vienna. (Kurt Kren is considered to be the father of the European underground film.) Kurt Showed me lots of documents, papers and letters, all about the fights he had with many restaurant owners in Vienna. But the film I made is not about these fights; I tried to focus on the eye of the hurricane, the eye of Kurt Kren. Is this Kurt Kren or isn't it?" (HHK)
Director
Kurt Kren films an anti-war poster in extreme close-up moves to subvert the quick responses of viewers to its loaded imagery.
Writer
The Austrian avant-gardist Otto Muehl may well be the most scandalous filmmaker to ever work in cinema, and Sodoma stands as his most famous work. This creation takes the experiments a bit further down the road.
The Austrian avant-gardist Otto Muehl may well be the most scandalous filmmaker to ever work in cinema, and Sodoma stands as his most famous work. This creation takes the experiments a bit further down the road.
Director
One of Otto Muehl's actionist films, where a man and a woman play around with the bird in a rather unwholesome way
Cinematography
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.
Director
A report about an Underground Festival on tour through Germany and Switzerland.
Director
Kurt Kren filmed pieces of feature films in the cinema without looking through the viewfinder. The missing sexual climax from the cinema was added by Kren in the form of insights and views from Otto Muehl's Libi Aktion.
Himself
Ludwig Schönherr | Federal Republic of Germany | 1969 | 18 fps | 3'25" | silent
Director
Kren filmed, in microscopic detail the reflection and refraction of the light in/on a glass bottle. However, the bottle itself (the whole body) is never seen. What is seen is much more the emanations of light from the glass and its clarity. (Michael Palm)
Director
A short film by Kurt Kren.
Camera Operator
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.
Cinematography
An experimental, bizarre and a very different shooting of an association between the sexes.
Director
In Schatzi Kurt Kren films a photo which shows an SS officer standing on a town square which is littered with dead bodies.
Cinematography
Kren frames the image to suggest a proscenium, with a view to the harbor that conveys a literal sense of “tele-vision”. The static framing of the image and the clearly stratified mise-en-scène can hardly provoke interpretation. The sight of the girls does so all the more. Kren, the gentle voyeur - who turns the viewer into a secret accomplice - observes three teenagers, and probably like them, awaits a rendezvous. (Thomas Trummer)
Producer
Kren frames the image to suggest a proscenium, with a view to the harbor that conveys a literal sense of “tele-vision”. The static framing of the image and the clearly stratified mise-en-scène can hardly provoke interpretation. The sight of the girls does so all the more. Kren, the gentle voyeur - who turns the viewer into a secret accomplice - observes three teenagers, and probably like them, awaits a rendezvous. (Thomas Trummer)
Director
Kren frames the image to suggest a proscenium, with a view to the harbor that conveys a literal sense of “tele-vision”. The static framing of the image and the clearly stratified mise-en-scène can hardly provoke interpretation. The sight of the girls does so all the more. Kren, the gentle voyeur - who turns the viewer into a secret accomplice - observes three teenagers, and probably like them, awaits a rendezvous. (Thomas Trummer)
Director
Sinus Beta is almost a sort of teaching film about bodily behavior in different situations. The film also produces, through the heterogenic photographic materiality of the primary elements, a cross-section of the methods, used in capturing the body in a still photograph. (Mubi)
Director
A collage of many visuals. A man urinates; a man has a drink. A man defecates; someone eats a meal. 16/67 September 20: ‘The Eating Drinking Shitting Pissing Film'.
Director
Kren’s last film to include any direct reference to Otto Muehl is 12/66: Cosinus Alpha, a 10-minute film that completes a cycle of elaborate sensual montages and materials.
Director
11/65 Bild Helga Philipp is an optical abstraction of an optical abstraction: Kren has simply intercut filmed movements and sections from an Op painting by Helga Philipp - the result is motion opticals.
himself
A kind of home movie made in Brus' apartment. Brus' Christmas wishes can be seen on a poster which he painted and which he holds for a short time in front of the camera.
Director
A kind of home movie made in Brus' apartment. Brus' Christmas wishes can be seen on a poster which he painted and which he holds for a short time in front of the camera.
Director
"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.
Director
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)
Director
In 9/64 O Christmas Tree Kren offers a more visually descriptive development of a Muehl "action". The images have been chosen to follow a more dramatic sequence, probably because the action itself contained a wide range of images and materials.
Director
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.
Director
This three-minute film was far more akin to the American-style "happening" in that the content was not particularly extreme. It was built up from items such as broken bicycle parts, a nude model, pieces of furniture, and these elements were then obscured or transformed by having a layer of paint thrown on them.
Director
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)
Director
Almost as if entering the picture frame by chance, mute characters lean out of Viennese apartment windows, simply to have a look.
Director
The film uses slides - photographic planes - which show different surfaces and finishes of a wall, which have been erroded by time. Kren stacks the positives and negatives of these pictures quickly one after the other, so that a moving relief-type structure develops through this combination of "two eyes." A mysterious ambiguous image manifests itself before us, surrounded by all kinds of possible mythological connotations. What is there to see?
Director
Kren's second film and the first he cut according to a strictly serial, sequence technique: in various frame sizes, the 48 portraits from the Szondi Test for "experimental diagnosis of human impulses" are shown in pre-specified lengths (between one and eight frames).
Director
The first embodiment of (a) concept of structural activity in cinema comes in Kren's Bäume im Herbst, where the camera as a subjective observer is constrained within a systematic or structural procedure, incidentally the precursors of the most structuralist aspect of Michael Snow's later work. In this film, perception of material relationships in the world is seen to be no more than a product of the structural activity in the work. Art forms experience.
Director
Mostly dark, rejecting images which are repeated. A stone wall, the chamber of a revolver which is, at first not recognizable, a close-up of a cactus. The duration of the takes emphasises the photographic character of the pictures, simultaneously with a crackling, brutal sound. (Hans Scheugl)
Director
Vacation pictures from Rome.
Director
A "stroll" at various locations: the St. Marx Cemetery, the Prater park, Carnuntum. We see people taking walks, construction workers, people flying model planes and other little observations. Kren also used a short segment of found footage in colour which shows a woman in a bikini.
Director
A silent short film by Kurt Kren.
