13/67: Sinus Beta

Austria

1967

6 Min

Color

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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DIR Kurt Kren

Synopsis

The following can be seen: unpleasant photos from a book on facial expressions and gestures, some heads from the Szondi test, figures dodging the rain, a few glances from a tower down at the people below, and finally fragments of an action, which Kren captured on film in 1966 at the Destruction in Art Symposium in London. 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. And so the roughly-grained photos from the book seem to be like the booty, which Etienne-Jules Marey shot with his chrono-photographic shotgun, while trying to make the bodily movements surveyable. (Michael Palm: “Which Way? Drei Pfade durchs Bild-Gebüsch von Kurt Kren,” in: (ed.) H. Scheugl, Ex Underground Kurt Kren. Seine Filme, Vienna 1996). —filmvideo.at

Director

Kurt Kren

Kurt Kren (September 20, 1929 – died in Vienna on June 23, 1998) was an Austrian avantgarde filmmaker. He is best known for his involvement with the Vienna Aktionists and the group of films that resulted.

Kurt Kren was born in 1929 in Vienna, Austria to a family of a Jewish father (a bank employee) and German mother. From 1939 till the end of World War II Kren lived in Rotterdam, where he was sent 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 a film career in the early 1950s creating experimental short 8mm films. In 1957 he moved to the 16mm format.

In 1966, Kren participated in the Destruction in Art Symposium in London. In 1968 he visited the USA for the first time, showing his films in New York and St. Louis. After a participation in a happening “Kunst und Revolution” (“Art and Revolution”) at the University of Vienna in 1968, Kren’s films were confiscated… read more

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msmichel

11May12

Strange mixture of collage and capture. Fleeting glimpses of faces, the manipulation of photographs, images of students making art or deluding themselves they were. A little overreaching too say this is educational.