Catalogue > At random
Thomas Brück
Begehung
Documentary | digital | color | 29:40 | Germany | 2023
On the outskirts of the small town of Gommern, a heath garden has been inviting visitors for a walk since 1996. This was once the site of Ernst Reindel's rendering plant, who executed numerous people as an executioner during the Nazi era. The insistent camera view shows images in the here and now, while a stoic narrative voice recites original documents from Ernst Reindel's biography. What do we remember? How do we commemorate? What remains? The term "Begehung" is ambiguous in German. The title can be understood as "Begehung eines Ortes" (site visit) as well as a term from jurisprudence: "Begehung eines Verbrechens" (committing a crime). Since a corresponding translation in English seemed insufficient, we decided to keep the German title as the international title.
Thomas Brück was born in Zapopan (Mexico) in 1988. He studied time-based arts at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle and media art and cinematography at the Havana University of the Arts in Cuba in 2017. After graduating, he completed the Professional Media Master Class for artistic documentary shortfilm at the Werkleitz Gesellschaft in 2022 and was recipient of the Graduate Scholarship of the State of Saxony-Anhalt. In his artistic and cinematic work, he deals with concepts and constructions of reality and identity as well as the relationship between objectivity and aesthetic illusion. He is currently developing his first feature-length documentary film about historical and contemporary narratives of the appocalypse as a speculative vision of the upcoming end of the world. Thomas Brück lives and works in Halle and Leipzig.