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GME is pleased to release the two most recent digital editions of moving image works by notable Austrian experimental filmmakers Peter Tscherkassky (EXQUISITE ECSTASIES) and Dietmar Brehm (PRAXIS SELECTION). Both these DVDs have been published through the INDEX DVD label, which aims to represent a comprehensive history of Austrian film, video, and media art.

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Peter Tscherkassky was a founder of sixpackfilm (a distribution company based in Vienna) and the editor of “Film Unframed: A History of Austrian Avant-Garde Cinema.” He is an internationally recognized artist, whose films in recent years have premiered at festivals in Cannes and Venice. He works primarily with found footage material, from which he creates multi-layered, densely textured films. This newest compilation of his works, EXQUISITE ECSTASIES, includes 4 Super-8 films from the 1980s (BLOOD-LETTING, FILM OF LOVE, HOLIDAY FILM, TABULA RASA) and THE EXQUISITE CORPUS, a 35mm film from 2015. This edition complements GME’s prior release of compilation DVDs of other Tscherkassky films (ATTRACTIONS, INSTRUCTIONS AND OTHER ROMANCES and FILMS FROM A DARK ROOM). All together, these 3 DVD publications incorporate 16 films by Tscherkassky, which now allows an in-depth academic study of his work across the entire span of his career.

The timely appearance of this DVD coincides with the publication of a special issue of Found Footage Magazine devoted to Peter Tscherkassky and his cinematic work. In that publication, Matthew Levine has written that “From the crude, punkish energy of ADERLASS (1981) to the libidinous dreamscape of THE EXQUISITE CORPUS (2015), there’s no escaping the immediacy of cinema as a tactile and sensuous object.” Both these films are represented on the DVD release of EXQUISITE ECSTASIES.

And, according to Daniel Kasman, writing in the booklet accompanying this DVD, “Tscherkassky’s film THE EXQUISITE CORPUS works to collapse the line between the filmed body and the celluloid. Tscherkassky meticulously manipulates in his darkroom...This is where Tscherkassky's love for celluloid is wedded to his source films' love for flesh, where the pathways to climax --narrative and sexual-- are built from the same component parts of mystery, attraction, rhythm, repetition, variation, new sensations, and ecstasy."

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Supplementing our previous release of a DVD compilation of Austrian filmmaker Dietmar Brehm’s filmic works entitled BLACK GARDEN, GME now offers DIETMAR BREHM: PRAXIS SELECTION. Dietmar Brehm studied painting at the University of Fine Arts in Linz, where he also taught. His creative output includes drawings and paintings, as well as photography and experimental films. His films been screened internationally and broadcast on European television.

In his cinematic works, Brehm transforms seemingly simple visual traces of everyday objects – faces, bodies, and natural events – into uncharted territory. According to Stephan Grissemann, “Brehm's PRAXIS series is driven by a spirit of enterprise that is clearly palpable. Since 1974 Brehm has been sensuously modulating his private iconography in ever new variations, ceaselessly engaged with his ever-growing image and sound archive, withdrawn into the interior of an infernal fantasy. There is no posturing behind his cool treatment of the disquieting signs in his work, but rather ennui, a loner life, solipsism. Dietmar Brehm orchestrates implosions and idling states. He could be seen as the representative of a telephone-game art movement: His work is post avant-garde, post-narrative, post-surreal, post-pornographic and post-psychoanalytic; it appears like an extra entry in the annals of a long since shelved cultural history, like a last-ditch effort of art after the end of time.”