Artist in Person "Sometimes I have to think of (myself) as a tourist in the universe making snapshots with my films."-Kurt Kren Austrian filmmaker Kurt Kren returns to the Bay Area for his first visit since 1980 to present two programs of his films (the second program will be at the Cinematheque on Thursday, February 24). His dense, precisely edited works vary in length from seconds to no more than ten minutes, and date from the 1950s to the present. Noel Carroll has characterized Kren's early work as revealing a "Méliès-like fascination with the mechanisms of cinematic fantasy." His films from '64 to '67 were made in conjunction with performances by the Direct Art movement in Vienna, particularly Gunter Brus and Otto Muehl. These works were purposefully assaultive and taboo-breaking, and have been described as fighting repression with regression. They remain startling and shocking in their depiction of the naked body as material. His later, more mysterious work continues his use of complex strategies, yet his use of expressive poetic images startles differently-with the shock of seeing the possibilities of the image anew, as he superimposes disparate times or sifts through different readings.-Kathy Geritz Note: All of Kren's film titles are preceded by two numbers; the first indicates the film's chronological order, while the second indicates the year it was made.