Thursday,
February 25 – Saturday, February 27
Directors in
Focus
What
Farocki Taught
Co-presented
with the Goethe Institute, New York City
Once
called “Germany's best-known unknown filmmaker,” Harun
Farocki makes experimental documentaries and “essay films” that
explore the use of images and ways of seeing, as well as questioning
and commenting on the nature of film-making itself. In
this retrospective series, International House presents some
of Farocki’s recent work, as well as his classics Inextinguishable
Fire and As You See.
“The
tone is that of wonder, the inflection is that of astonishment:
in Farocki's cinema, a child's sense of surprise is never far
away, but it always surges up most forcefully when he is asking
himself about the status and nature of images.” - Thomas Elsaesser,
Senses of Cinema
Thanks
to Julianne Camfield and Aurelia Vowinckel for their invaluable
assistance.
Thursday,
February 25 at 7pm
Nothing
Ventured
dir. Harun Farocki, Germany, 2004, DVD, 50 mins, color,
German w/ English subtitles
The
film follows the negotiations between a mid-sized company and
a venture capital firm as the company looks for capital to start
production on its invention. Farocki limits himself to observing
events without comment. It’s a microscopic look at one cell
of today’s economy; an ethnographic portrait of a commonplace
business dealing.
preceded
by
Prison
Images
dir. Harun Farocki, Germany/France 2000, DVD, 60 mins, color
and b/w, German w/ English subtitles
How
have prisons been portrayed over the 100 years of film history?
What kinds of images are produced by prisons themselves with
surveillance cameras and training videos for prison personnel?
The penal institution becomes an anthropological laboratory,
in which life and death are rehearsed in front of the camera’s
unblinking eye.
Friday,
February 26 at 7pm
As
You See
dir. Harun Farocki, Germany, 1986, DVD, 72 mins, color and
b/w, German w/ English subtitles
The
tank is a logical outgrowth of agricultural machinery, while
machine guns are based on a principle similar to that of the
internal combustion engine. Farocki gives us the history of
technology as a succession of automation phases, in which the
human hand is replaced by the computer’s calculations.
preceded
by
War
at a Distance
dir. Harun Farocki, Germany, 2003, DVD, 58 mins, color and
b/w, German w/ English subtitles
Footage
from American missiles from the first Iraq war served to demonstrate
technological superiority. For Harun Farocki, they are examples
of a new kind of photograph. GPS systems, “intelligent weapons”
and industrial processing of work units are all based on computational
processes that reduce pictures to algorithms and technical operations.
Saturday,
February 27 at 5pm
What
Farocki Taught
dir.
Jill Goodmillow, US, 1997, DVD, 30 mins, color
This
is a stubborn film containing a perfect replica of Harun Farocki's
astute 1969 film Inextinguishable Fire, about the production
of Napalm B by the Dow Chemical Company for the War in Vietnam;
about the abuses of human labor; and about documentary filmmaking.
preceded
by
Inextinguishable
Fire
dir. Harun Farocki, West Germany, 1969, DVD, 25 mins, b/w,
German w/ English subtitles
Harun
Farocki’s first movie after leaving film school combines didactics
and political agitation with a sparse cinematic style. Farocki
contrasts the voyeurism of Vietnam War reporting with a didactic
arrangement: a model reconstruction of napalm manufacture is
followed by a playful call to revolution.
Saturday,
February 27 at 7pm
Still
Life
dir.
Harun Farocki, Germany, 1997, DVD, 58 mins, color and b/w, German
w/ English subtitles
Classic
16th and 17th century still life paintings are edited together
with documentary footage from photographic studios of the 1990s
in a juxtaposition of paintings and advertising. Images of money,
cheese and beer are shown painted down to the last detail and
meticulously staged to evoke consumer greed. Farocki’s film
tracks the similarities and differences of two kinds of portrayals
in which goods and things almost appear as fetish objects.
preceded
by
Workers
Leaving the Factory
dir.
Harun Farocki, Germany/France/US, 1995, DVD, 36 mins, color
and b/w, German w/ English subtitles
Based
on one of the Lumiere brothers’ historic first films, Farocki
has created a montage of scenes from 100 years of film history,
all variations on the theme of “workers leaving the factory”.
Farocki uses the pictures to reflect on the iconography and
economy of a workers’ society, as well as that of cinema itself,
which tends to acquire its audience at the gates of the factory
and hijack them into the private sphere.
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