HYLO-VISION-PLUS. Version 1

Dietmar Brehm's Hylo-Vision-Plus. Version 1 is a minimalistic study of ecstatic moments and it is named after eye-drop medicine. You could think the title is meant ironically by a filmmaker who has always been preoccupied with the doors of perception and their illusive images. But it was in fact sensory distortions, blurriness and opacities caused by the drug that inspired Brehm to make this film. A person with distorted sight can possibly see an apocalyptic vision of horror in a cloud mixing with chimney smoke. It is this image in any case that provides the prelude to a strophically structured visit to a bar or club, with faces, gazes, and bodies strung together in the frenetic dance of the film's montage.
The repetition of guitar riffs from "Horizontal Hold" played by British post-punk pioneer This Heat sets the beat to which Brehm arranges his images of a nocturnal community. Swiveling bodies, kisses, cigarette drags, move like a dream behind closed eyelids, a coincidental community (from the archive) oscillating between euphoria and hallucination.
The rhythms are not only fueled by the editing but also given contour by virtue of rapid shifts to negative, resulting in a high-contrast pulsation reminiscent of stroboscopic light effects. It is only Brehm's characteristic close-up of a face with eyes like two white holes that time and again provides momentary calm. Hylo-Vision-Plus. Version 1 is like an ornery piece of Pop-Art immersed in a state of intoxication, in which performances and bodies briefly lose their clarity. The film does not want to smooth things over or let the night end, but instead infect us with its energy. A silhouette of motion pictures from an underground without an emergency exit. (Dominik Kamalzadeh)

Translation: Eve Heller