Menu

Harun Farocki

Harun Farocki: Working on the Sight-Lines, edited by Thomas Elsaesser

December 27, 2017

In the introductory chapter, Harun Farocki: Filmmaker, Artist, Media Theorist, Thomas Elsaesser underscores the idea that the singularity of Farocki’s cinema resides, not in the power (or juxtaposition) of images, but in the residual impact of the afterimages that is revealed through a careful editing design, noting that for the filmmaker, the power of cinema… read more »

Still Life, 1997

December 27, 2017

The convergence of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s A Trip to the Louvre and experimental filmmaker Mark LaPore’s transfixing ethnography Kolkata at this year’s View from the Avant-Garde provided the proper frame of mind to revisit Harun Farocki’s meditation on the art of consumerism, Still Life, a film that on the surface seemed to be… read more »

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film Based on Franz Kafka’s Unfinished Novel ‘America’

January 8, 2018

The French word répétition – rather than the English word rehearsal – more closely captures the implicit connotation behind Straub and Huillet’s rigorous and exacting method of preparation for the shooting of Class Relations. A seated Straub asks the actor Christian Heinisch (who plays Rossmann) to deliver his lines over and over, each time, subtly… read more »

Workers Leaving the Factory, 1995

December 27, 2017

The projection of the 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumière short film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory is accompanied by a third person narrator who observes the unfolding, animated images of a group of men, women, and even dogs making their way out of the entrance gates and comments on their apparent haste in exiting the… read more »

Images of the World and the Inscription of War, 1989

December 27, 2017

In 1944, an Allied aircraft took topographic photographs of Auschwitz during a routine surveillance operation for power plants, munitions factories, chemical plants, and any other industrial complexes that could potentially serve as bombing targets that, in the military’s myopic search for these high collateral targets that would cripple the German war machine, failed to recognize… read more »

Between Two Wars, 1978

December 27, 2017

“When you have no money for cars, for shoot-outs, for smart clothes; when you have no money for images which themselves could paper the cracks of film-time, film-life, then you must invest your strength in the intelligence to connect the separate elements – the montage of ideas.” In the opening sequence of Between Two Wars,… read more »

Inextinguishable Fire, 1969

December 27, 2017

“How can we show you napalm in action? And how can we show you the injuries caused by napalm? If we show you pictures of napalm burns, you’ll close your eyes. First you’ll close your eyes to the pictures. Then you’ll close your eyes to the memory. Then you’ll close your eyes to the facts…. read more »

Memories, 2007 (Jeonju Digital Project)

January 8, 2018

Respite (Harun Farocki) Harun Farocki’s contribution to the 2007 Jeonju International Film Festival Digital Project, Respite, channels the spirit of his magnum opus, Images of the World and the Inscription of War to create a potent and provocative film essay on production, warfare, historical reconstruction, and the role of image-making. A prefacing text on the… read more »

Program 10: Bright Future

December 28, 2017

War at a Distance (Harun Farocki) Expounding on Farocki’s familiar themes of production and warfare (particularly in the depopulated, automated factory assembly line integration processes of Images of the World and the Inscription of War), War at a Distance is a brilliant, intelligently reasoned, and provocative video essay on the interrelation, not only between war… read more »

Sidebar