Central (Zentrale)
About
Astral bodies engaging in group sex: Dietmar Brehm's Zentrale is a meditation on the human body's outer limits and the material nature of the skin. The first image shows a naked light bulb, its rays barely able to illuminate a dark room. This is followed by a supine naked body stretched out like in Courbet's famous painting depicting the origin of the world. But the figure's genitals remain invisible, outside the visual fields exposed in Zentrale. Even if men and women busy themselves with each other, stimulating one another's anuses with sticks or penises with their mouths, this can only be suspected, or assumed. In Zentrale skin is given a pulsing white quality that makes it flow out of the darkness into which this film's world has been plunged. The more visible the figures become, the more comical their actions; they go at each other in a manner suggesting mollusk-like beings which are no longer equipped with sex organs, having become sex organs themselves. Sexuality is transformed into a symbiotic process opposed solely by the negativity of the blackness, which the bodies at times seem to cover before it dominates the scene again. The supine woman, who caresses her own breasts and then spreads her arms again, is one of those typical Brehm leitmotifs which behave paradoxically in light of the film's "story."
The genital fixation, the central idea in all cum-shot staging, is altered to create a setting in which lust again coincides with reproduction on the level of the film material: The cell division typical of pornographic films can be observed in Zentrale.
(Bert Rebhandl)
Translation: Steve Wilder
Films
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Other films by this artist in our catalogue
- Read MoreExperimental
Blicklust
Dietmar Brehm16mm, color, sound, 18 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
The Murder Mystery
Dietmar Brehm16mm, color, sound, 18 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
MIX-1 (32 Films 1989-1994)
Dietmar Brehmcolor, sound, 24 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
Party
Dietmar Brehmblack and white, sound, 18 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
Macumba
Dietmar Brehmblack and white, sound, 18 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
MIX-2 (21 Scenes 1997)
Dietmar Brehmcolor, sound, 38 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
Korridor
Dietmar Brehmblack and white, sound, 18 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
Organics
Dietmar Brehmblack and white, sound, 18 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
Bolts of Lightning (Blitze)
Dietmar Brehmcolor, silent, 8 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
MIX-3
Dietmar Brehmcolor, sound, 14 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
MIX-4
Dietmar Brehmcolor, sound, 21 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
Twisted Eyes (Verdrehte Augen), Second Version
Dietmar Brehmblack and white, sound, 13 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
Basis-pH
Dietmar Brehmcolor, silent, 11 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
Fit
Dietmar Brehmcolor, silent, 17 minRental format: 16mm - Read MoreExperimental
Echo-Echo
Dietmar Brehmcolor, silent, 6 minRental format: 16mm