Harun Farocki Retrospective

Arsenal Cinema

Year by Year: 1982–1992

Side by Side: Image work between production and destruction

 

Admission: ticket (€ 7,50; members Arsenal and n.b.k.: € 5)

> Kino Arsenal, Potsdamer Straße 2, 10785 Berlin

 

 

October 21, 2017

4pm

Ost-West: Gespräch mit Heiner Müller (Director: Harun Farocki, 1981, 10 min)

A section of a longer discussions that Farocki conducted with Heiner Müller for “Filmkritik” magazine that was broadcast on the television show “Kino 81.” 

 

Etwas wird sichtbar (Director: Harun Farocki, 1982, OV/EnS, 114 min)

A couple, Anna und Robert, in Berlin, images of the war in the Vietnam, and the connection between them. “Farocki de- and reconstructs these images of the Vietnam war. On the one hand, Anna and Robert subject these images to a critical reappraisal. Yet on the other hand, he restages several of the most well-known images from Vietnam, thus enabling these images already reproduced a hundred times to be read and perceived anew.” (Tilman Baumgärtel)

 

Ronny and Harun spielen Theater (Director: Harun Farocki, 1982, 6 min)

A guerilla advertising campaign that entails Harun Farocki and actor Ronny Tanner acting out a short scene from Etwas wird sichtbar in the foyer of the Delphi cinema in Berlin. 

 

 

6.30pm

Kurzfilme von Peter Weiss. Vorgestellt von Harun Farocki (Director: Harun Farocki, 1982, 87 min)

Harun Farocki shows short films by Peter Weiss and reads out his texts on the films in parallel by candlelight.

 

 

8.30pm

Militarisierung des Blicks

Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges (Director: Harun Farocki, 1988, OV/EnS, 75 min)

Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges is a reflection about the ambiguous concept of “Aufklärung” (enlightenment/intelligence), which Farocki approaches from various different perspectives, including the technologies that determine how we see and the conditions of perception. 

How is it possible to prove the (media) violence of an image? Like few other films, Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges (1988) prepares the viewer for the ever-greater complicity with images as the operative means for conducting war, a tendency which can only be met with critical questioning of the cogency of the image. Based on existing images, Farocki documents a “terrorist aesthetic” (Paul Virilio) of optical stimulation, which appears both on control screens and on television with the confessed goal of making the observer or viewer either an accomplice or a potential victim, just like in times of war.

 

Followed by a discussion with Christa Blümlinger (Prof. Film Studies, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) and Nora M. Alter (Prof. Film and Media Arts, Temple University, Philadelphia)

 

 

October 22, 2017

4pm

Ein Bild (Director: Harun Farocki, 1983, OV/EnS, 25 min)

Ein Bild documents the production of a pin-up image for “Playboy” at a photo studio without commentary. The naked model is draped over a pedestal, has her hair and make-up redone again and again; careful, concentrated work in order to create an illusion. 

 

Arbeiten zu „Klassenverhältnisse“ von Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub (Director: Harun Farocki, 1983, 65 min)

An observation of directorial couple Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at work. A rehearsal with Harun Farocki himself in the role of Delamarche in the form of an intensive engagement with the text. 

 

 

6pm

L’Argent“ von Bresson (Director: Hartmut Bitomsky, Manfred Blank, Harun Farocki, 1983, 30 min)

Harun Farocki gives a commentary on Robert Bresson’s Film “L’argent” together with other authors from “Filmkritik” magazine. 

 

Peter Lorre – Das doppelte Gesicht (Director: Harun Farocki, Felix Hofmann, 1984, 59 min)

Taking Lorre’s face as his starting point, Harun Farocki creates a precise analysis of Peter Lorre’s erratic career. By looking at photos and film excerpts, different thought processes are set in motion and his biography is traced from his origins in the theatre all the way to his emigration to the US and Hollywood career.

 

 

8pm

Betrogen (Director: Harun Farocki, 1985, OV/EnS, 99 min)

Betrogen is Farocki’s only feature. Inspired by a newspaper report, the film tells a story of disappointed love, fraud, and (self-)deception, the story of a man who runs his wife over in a car and whose sister sees this as a chance to escape her own life and take her sister’s place. 

 

 

 

October 23, 2017

8.30pm

Bausteine produzieren

Transport 1 und 2 (Director: Harun Farocki, 1973, 6 min)

Transport is a playful look at attempts to make the transport of an important building material more efficient.

 

Zum Vergleich (Director: Harun Farocki, 2009, 61 min)

In Zum Vergleich (2009), Harun Farocki produces a subjective cinematographic atlas of working processes based on brickworking facilities in India, Switzerland, Burkina Faso, France, and other places. Work by hand. Industry work. Computer work. Without commentary. A global history of brick production.

 

Followed by a discussion with Jean-Pierre Bekolo (filmmaker, Berlin)

 

 

October 24, 2017

7pm

Huillet / Straub (1)

Filmtip: Der Tod des Empedokles (Director: Harun Farocki 1987, 7 min)

In Filmtip: Der Tod des Empedokles (1987), Harun Farocki speaks as, as it were, from one colleague to another with Andreas von Rauch, who plays the role of Empedocles in the film by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet.

 

Arbeiten zu „Klassenverhältnisse“ von Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub (Director: Harun Farocki, 1983, 65 min)

For in Arbeiten zu „Klassenverhältnisse“ (1983) by Huillet/Straub, Farocki himself appears as an actor in the role of Delamarche. This collaboration can be understood as another form of learning and working with images. This film isn’t just a self-portrait, but also a tribute to Jean-Marie Straub–Farocki’s role model, colleague, and friend–and a documentary about an extraordinarily detailed set of staging techniques and methods for directing actors. In this way, Farocki filmed a work of resistance against traditional cinema, against which he also positioned himself with his own films.

 

Followed by a discussion with Constanze Ruhm (video artist, Vienna and Berlin) and Christine Lang (filmmaker, cultural scientist, and dramaturg, Berlin) as well as Rembert Hüser (Prof. Media Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main), Barton Byg (founding director DEFA Film Library, University of Massachussetts, Amherst), and Manfred Blank (filmmaker, Berlin)

 

 

October 25, 2017

8pm

Filmtip: Tee im Harem des Archimedes (Director: Harun Farocki, 1985, 7 min)

A short introduction and review of Mehdi Charef’s film. 

 

Filmbücher (Director: Harun Farocki, 1986, OV/EnS, 15 min)

A review of film books old and new as a report for the television series “KINO ’86.”

 

Wie man sieht (Director: Harun Farocki, 1986, OV/EnS, 72 min)

Two motifs pervade the film: crossing and fabric. “It’s about paths crossings and a city being formed, about machine guns with a hand crank and machine guns with a heavy recoil, about laying out motorways in National Socialist Germany and West Germany, about designing streets and cutting up animals, about images of slaughter from above and below, about the birth of the calculator from the weaving mill.” (Harun Farocki)

 

 

 

October 26, 2017

7pm

Schlagworte – Schlagbilder. Ein Gespräch mit Vilém Flusser (Director: Harun Farocki, 1986, 13 min)

A conversation in a café between Harun Farocki and Vilém Flusser about the design of the Bild Zeitung’s front page. 

 

Kuhle Wampe: Eine Einführung (Director: Harun Farocki, 1986, 6 min)

Harun Farocki gives an introduction to Slatan Dudow’s film.

 

Die Schulung (Director: Harun Farocki, 1987, OV/EnS, 44 min)

Die Schulung observes a seminar for executives. Sales statistics are transposed onto the individual; as body language, gestures, and facial expressions are practised, psychology and modern capitalism merge. 

 

Filmtip: Der Tod des Empedokles (Director: Harun Farocki, 1987, 7 min)

In Filmtip: Der Tod des Empedokles (1987), Harun Farocki speaks as, as it were, from one colleague to another with Andreas von Rauch, who plays the role of Empedocles in the film by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet.

 

Die Menschen stehen vorwärts in den Straßen (Director: Harun Farocki, 1987, 8 min)

A film based on the poem “Die Menschen stehen vorwärts in den Straßen” by Georg Heym (1911).

 

 

9pm

Bilderkrieg (Director: Harun Farocki, 1987, 44 min)

In this TV production, Harun Farocki considers the meaning of the German word “Aufklärung” (reconnaissance/intelligence) in relation to military and police work. He traces the development of photographic methods which draw on reconnaissance of this kind and demonstrates their interpretational possibilities. 

 

Georg K. Glaser – Schriftsteller and Schmied (Director: Harun Farocki, 1988, OV/EnS, 44 min)

Harun Farocki found a successful combination of work both physical and mental–smithing and writing–in the Paris workshop of Georg Glaser, a “worker-writer”, who fled to France in 1933. 

 

 

 

October 27, 2017

9.30pm

Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges (Director: Harun Farocki, 1988, OV/EnS, 75 min)

Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges is a reflection about the ambiguous concept of “Aufklärung” (enlightenment/intelligence), which Farocki approaches from various different perspectives, including the technologies that determine how we see and the conditions of perception. 

How is it possible to prove the (media) violence of an image? Like few other films, Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges (1988) prepares the viewer for the ever-greater complicity with images as the operative means for conducting war, a tendency which can only be met with critical questioning of the cogency of the image. Based on existing images, Farocki documents a “terrorist aesthetic” (Paul Virilio) of optical stimulation, which appears both on control screens and on television with the confessed goal of making the observer or viewer either an accomplice or a potential victim, just like in times of war.

 

 

 

October 28, 2017

8pm

Kinostadt Paris (Director: Manfred Blank, Harun Farocki, 1988, 60 min)

Harun Farocki and Manfred Blank explore Paris as a city of cinema and images, from the Cinémathèque française to the then recently founded Vidéothèque de Paris. After watching video tapes on a screen, they are seen falling asleep at a table at a café, with dream images from an electronic image archive becoming linked with images from the films of Godard.

 

Image and Umsatz oder: Wie kann man einen Schuh darstellen? (Director: Harun Farocki,1989, 52 min)

How is a product depicted? Farocki shows a meticulous interest in documenting all the working steps in an advertising campaign for a shoe collection.

 

 

 

October 30, 2017

7.15pm

Leben BRD (Director: Harun Farocki, 1990, OV/EnS, 83 min)

People practice for emergencies in lessons, group therapy sessions, and discussion rounds. In a parallel montage without commentary, life in West Germany is made to appear like one ongoing role play, in which experience is replaced by simulation.

 

 

9pm

Gegen-Musik

So long good-bye (Hörfunk / Radio, Harun Farocki, WDR 3, 1978, 47 min)

In Farock’s film, music plays neither an accompanying, nor a dramatic role, but rather appears as a space for observing production processes, much like how the image functions. So long good-bye (1978) is a radio feature by Harun Farocki for WDR, which documented the 18-hour production of a three-minute disco single at the Hansa studios in Berlin in April 1977, a single which was supposed to replicate the success of Boney M. and Donna Summer in the record shop shelves. Two years later, Farocki returned to the sound studio–now with a camera–to document the production of another piece of music for Single. Eine Schallplatte wird produziert (1979).

 

Single. Eine Schallplatte wird produziert (Director: Harun Farocki, 1979, OV/EnS, 49 min)

Harun Farocki observes and documents the recording of a three-minute-long pop song in a record studio. His interest in work processes is directed at the culture industry, in which music production is understood as a process based on the division of labor.

 

Followed by a discussion with Antje Ehmann (artist and curator, Berlin) and Christine Lang (filmmaker, cultural scientist, and dramaturg, Berlin)

 

 

October 31, 2017

7.15pm

Was ist los (Director: Harun Farocki, 1991, 60 min)

“WHO...? asks Bresson and responds that it’s probably the devil. I ask WHAT drives us, as today the devil wears sportswear and has a fatigue fracture in his left foot. Here in the Federal Republic, there’s a lot going on in Marxist terms: the sterile production of added value. Lust without goal, unregulated cycles, no motif for redemption.” (Harun Farocki)

 

 

9.15pm

Videogramme einer Revolution (Director: Harun Farocki, A. Ujica, 1992, OV/EnS, 106 min)

Images from Romanian state television and video images shot by amateurs are compiled into a chronicle of the revolution in Romania in December 1989. It’s not just the images are important, but also their perspectives on what’s happening.