Praxis 8 - 12 Szenen (49-60)

49: Paris
50: Gebüsch/Copse
51: Chesterfield
52: Donauland
53: Badezimmer/Bathroom
54: Charles
55: Röntgen/X-Ray
56: Schwarzensee
57: Rechnung/Calculation
58: Bonbon
59: Jayne
60: Personal/Staff

The Praxis series, begun in 2007, has become a favorite project in Dietmar Brehm´s varied catalogue of film works; apparently, as the filmmaker claimed dryly, it will keep him busy for the rest of his life. Praxis–8 comprises twelve digitally altered scenes numbered in succession, from 49 to 60: They represent variations on found and original footage, primarily from the seventies and eighties. Classic Brehm motifs — cryptic details of unidentified porn and home movies; persistent noise soundtracks; a naked, tied-up model in a bondage movie; ironically placed kitsch objects; and the filmmaker´s face, shadowed by dark glasses — are synthesized and electronically refined in Praxis–8. Some mysterious events take place: A deformed, two-headed man closes his eyes in slow motion; a movie shot on vacation at the water takes on a different character in a dangerously skewed perspective; a human brain in a jar is seen through colorful filters; and a few isolated frames of Monroe copy Jayne Mansfield are stylized into a mini-horror film. Praxis–8 then ends in the nearly silent scene 60, at almost six minutes this film´s longest fragment. It literally bares its teeth along with silhouettes of filmed strangers: body parts and partial bodies. In Dietmar Brehm´s drastic comedies, however, more than just the physical is examined, the medium itself is the subject of investigation — with virtually obscene transparency, in a kind of x-rated x-ray that doesn´t stop at the human skin. At the same time the space delineated by the various stages in the material — from grainy Super-8 to the unreal sharpness of high-definition digital images — will extend to the pressure chamber where the psychological series of perception tests takes place: Brehm´s cinema is a Rorschach test with direct access to the subconscious.

(Stefan Grissemann)


I´ll probably continue making the Praxis series until rigor mortis makes me drop the camera.

(Dietmar Brehm)