Cinema of Disobedience: The Secret Love Life of The Urban Leopard + Klappe

Originaltitel: Klappe

64 Min. | 2022

Sprache: OmeU | Originalsprache: german, english, spanish

Regie: Jürgen Brüning

As in one of those snuff porn movies that depicts gruesome surgical procedures, Jürgen Brüning invites us to creep into his body and catch a glimpse of what is inside his famously criminal heart: a sex-ridden public toilet, a Tearoom, or (in German) a Klappe! A dirty place where many characters will take turns not only to shock, insult and irritate us, but also to shamelessly introduce a riotous debate about several wounds regarding dissident identities and contemporary culture.

“Fuck copyright laws!” is the war-cry with which Brüning and his editor, Jörn Hartmann, defy society’s most cherished values, meandering not only through samples from his own work, but pop references from around the world as well, and a set of rousing songs by Claudia Fierke, Stefan Kuschner and Matthias Köninger, in a rowdy mix resembling an unlikely uproarious underground TV channel midnight show that could only be possible in a better world, a world swayed by romantic revolutionaries and artists.

You may say many things about Brüning’s Klappe that could scare the most temperate dispositions, that its punk attitude is anti-religious, for instance, or anti-authoritarian at best, and somehow a bit anti-everything indeed, but it’s also undeniable its core of deep compassion, as opposed to the alarming dehumanization growing amidst the queer community, a frame of mind best resumed with a cherubic choir of heartbroken porn stars inviting us to sing enthusiastically: Long Live Gay Solidarity!

Goyo Anchou, May 2025