Huh Huh

- Huh Huh
1976-78
16mm film, color, no sound
70min, 26sec

Dietmar Brehm’s experimental filmic epic “Huh Huh” is a synopsis of six different Super 8 shorts shot between 1976 and 1978 that partly disintegrated. Their remains were eventually transferred to 16 mm film and amount to a comedy of sorts that plays out in the artist’s apartment. As he edited the final version, Brehm had films by directors such as Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jean-Luc Godard, or Andy Warhol in mind. Warhol’s “Factory” was thus ironically transferred into Brehm’s apartment, where one sees all sorts of people mingling and engaging in leisure activities. These include drinking, smoking, cutting each other’s hair and beards, playing with mirrors and light, performing half-naked, and talking into a microphone or the camera in extreme close-ups. These scenes are interspersed with images culled from American lifestyle magazines of that era. The camera frequently focuses on bodily details such as bleached hair, hairy male chests, and one protagonist’s long black beard—which is turned into a filmic sculpture in and of itself. There is a certain playfulness visible in all these scenes, which clearly indicate an ongoing party involving many instances of physical contact that run counter to conventional gender stereotypes. People pose for the camera, a pack of “Reyno” cigarettes is held into the camera over and over again, and one eventually perceives hints of weapons and murder. In all this, Brehm created a lush scenario in which people transgressed the strict conventions of the 1970s, thereby manifesting moments of freedom relevant to a post-1968 generation. W.S.