11 Point Program

In the films of Dietmar Brehm it is often the soundtrack that conveys the greater power of suggestion. He generally prefers sounds from everyday life that in themselves carry relatively little meaning, but in relation to the images gain a strange plasticity. Brehm radicalizes his method in 11 Point Program to such a degree that, as he himself indicates, you could see – or more literally, hear – the film "with your eyes closed". Loosely speaking, to be seen are two forms of seeing nothing: The film opens and concludes with a black screen that flanks an initially overwhelming and extreme flicker effect consuming 10 or 11 minutes of the 13-minute running time. Gradually it becomes clear that the focal point is perhaps a pupil – a black point that divides and further multiplies until there are 11 points distributed across the surface of the screen. The pulsation returns to its origin, the eleven points become one. It remains an open question whether this expansive movement constitutes the program indicated by the film’s title. It is perhaps more significant how the unbearable nature of the image’s stroboscopic movement compensatorily shifts attention to the sound. Brehm begins with a sound of rain characteristic of his entire body of work, as well as his signature sounds of a lighter igniting and drags on a cigarette. But it is above all a particular sound (notably recorded indoors) that carries a sense of threat central to 11 Point Program, namely the ringing of a telephone to which nobody responds: in conjunction with an automatic announcement of the time (speaking into the void), the screaming of an abandoned (?) toddler, a dog barking, and, in 2020 the extra worrisome sound of coughing, 11 Point Program conveys an ambiguous sense of terror that joins in with the very best films of Dietmar Brehm. (Bert Rebhandl)

Translation: Eve Heller