Twelve Short Films About Lettuce, 1967, 12 minutes
Kuhlenberg's masters thesis at the Danish Film Academy, Cabbage is an audacious tour de force of violent vegetable imagery. The inspiration behind the film has become the stuff of legend; while admiring an especially dense, globular head of lettuce in the market one morning, the young film student was crippled with a freak seizure. The result? He filmed the lettuce exploding, in slow motion, with twelve different Bolex cameras. Now considered the Citizen Kane of organic produce cinema, Cabbage was also Kuhlenberg's angry retort to the hubristic posturing and gossiping of the post-war Danish film critics. They got the message, loud and clear.
Le Bureau, 1971, 162 minutes
Fueled by nothing more than youthful cinematic idealism and cheap vodka, Erno Kuhlenberg produced the art-house masterpiece Le Bureau in only six shooting days. Filmed almost entirely in a trash dumpster in Copenhagen, the two-and-a-half hour film offers a non-narrative glimpse into the minds of two Danish graphic designers. By crosscutting between graceful panning shots of rotting fruit and rapid-fire stills of the designers' computer desktops (not unlike those currently on exhibit at KALIBER10000), Kuhlenberg managed to simultaneously evoke a powerful emotional response and crushing boredom.
Chimp Train, 1979, 98 minutes
Universally panned as "hackneyed" and "sleep-inducing," Train's flashback/hallucination sequences failed to impress the critics. In retrospect, however, Erno Kuhlenberg plays wonderfully with the chimps-in-wigs genre, sprinkling in sex, deception, and whimsy against the backdrop of Rwandan rainforest class struggles. Although Chimp Train was completely ignored by the film-going public (it grossed 378 dollars, much of that from the director's extended family), Kuhlenberg's ground-breaking work with costumed monkeys proved wildly successful, indirectly inspiring the upcoming TBS series, The Chimp Channel.
Partially Cloudy, 1982, 118 minutes
Kuhlenberg's foray into the romantic-comedy genre, this disappointing feature stars Burt Reynolds as a dashing meteorologist and a young Suzanne Somers as his love interest/radar technician. Attempting to examine the relationship between men, women, and low-pressure systems, Cloudy gets bogged down in sophomoric comic-strip allegories and a stillborn Pakistani espionage subplot. The film was recently given a second look by Oxygen, the new women's network featuring cutting-edge content and trenchant commentary. The forecast? Dismal, with a slight chance for laughter.
A Fistful Of Kroners, 1990, 97 minutes
The greatest Danish Western of all time? With the possible exception of Gunnar Toftlund's "Hang'em in Hundersted," yes. A prosperous tulip rancher (masterfully played by Geoffrey Rush) comes under fire from the Brondungen Boys, a notorious gang of windmill arsonists. All seems lost, when the mute stranger Karl Volvo rides in on a three-legged pony to level the score. A broad political allegory inspired by Tiananmen Square, Kuhlenberg's modern classic was the first film to win the triple crown: The Cannes Palm D'Or, The Berlin Golden Bear, and The Cinemax Silver Gerbil.
Star Whopper/The Search, 1993, 304/83 minutes
After a three-year hiatus, Kuhlenberg returned with the science-fiction epic Star Whopper. Unfortunately, studio execs were unenthusiastic about five solid hours of Judd Nelson jumping around in parachute pants and a motorcycle helmet, shooting a toy laser gun at uncoordinated extras in standard-issue lizard costumes. On the upside, Kuhlenberg was able to recut it, throw in a Leonard Nimoy voiceover, and re-release the film as a very successful documentary on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Due to increased attention for the organization's SETI@home program, which encourages participants to listen for ET with their home computers, The Search is currently airing on many PBS stations.
Various Product Advertisements, 1997-1999, 30-60 seconds
Depressed by the failure of the deeply personal Star Whopper, Kuhlenberg never fully regained confidence in his own filmmaking skills, but he did manage a comeback of sorts. Working in the high-pressure world of television commercials, Kuhlenberg helmed several successful productions, including Lowenbrau's hilarious "Baby with a Bottle Opener" spot and the Clio-winning "Who's a Donkey Now?" campaign for American Express. Just before his untimely death on a rafting expedition in the Ural mountains, Kuhlenberg completed shooting on what was to be his swan song, a techno-backed homage to the new, souped-up Volkswagen Bug entitled, simply, Turbonium.