“‘You know that every film has its own language…’ Brynntrup delves into the riddle of language, communication and desire through a cleverly amusing portrayal of a telephone call between a man and a woman.” – Karen Lund, Museum of Modern Art Department of Film, 1992 “The witty ‘Love, Jealousy and Revenge’ explores the mobile meanings of language in film with the help of sophisticated telecommunications; an aural/oral offering.” – Sarah Turner, Ian Rashid-Hygene and Hysteria Your Program, 1994 “Whether it be through a visual or verbal excerpt from his diaries, a cinematic album of (imagined?) former lovers, a matter-of-fact voiced-over curriculum vitae, or his manifold incarnations before the camera, Michael Brynntrup performs himself in a kind of drag. Dressed as Aunt Ida…he actually looks convincingly disguised. A distinctly queer impetus lies behind this construction of systems of identity, especially regarding the belief in scripted or imagistic self-representability.” – Alice Kuzniar, “Audacious Allegories: The Queer German Cinema,” Stanford University Press, 1999

“Pomegranate Tree” is an experimental film inspired by the lush and ceremonial paintings of the Qajar dynasty from Persia and Eli Langer’s violent, aggressive sketches. The film is a subtle study of sensuality. Originally shot on Super 8 and blown up to 16mm, the film was made for the Splice This! Super 8 Festival in the summer of ‘98.

Flares of colour break into streams of light, leaves, wood grain and prism-etched vegetation. A moon lifts out of this dark weave to be replaced by autumn leaves against a grainy sky, a fiery sky. The moon, again, caught in clouds. The movements, moonlit, of a cat. Vegetation and toned flares (a kind of “ghost light” midst microscopic photography of leaves and twigs). A gray cat licks itself, its nametag reflected in lens refractions midst microscopic visions of ice and snow, autumn leaves, green leaves, a distant snow-laden green scene. A black cat sits quickly down on a green lawn. A night of shards of forms in darkness passes into day again…again an octagonal light shape “echoing” the cat’s nametag midst, now coloured leaves in extreme close-up and at some distance mixed with sun. Again a “night” of showering dark, a “dawn” of pinks and yellows of plant growth in close-up. A kind of gentle yellow “high noon” prevails into which the orange worm appears and reappears, twisting, arching, turning. A phosphorescent orange of leaves explodes midst greens and black holes appropriate to the image of the worm. Flares of suns, imprismed midst yellows and greens and vibrant sky blues…always the forms of many varieties of leafage mix with a veritable rain or clash of overall tones, a fire of forms, a glowing colour photo-negative of worm, and the final canopies of autumn tone and sky tone permeated by sun, sun streaks and octagonal prism shapes as infinitum.