Harun Farocki: Documentary Essay Films at The Camera in March 3-12, 2008
Harun Farocki: Documentary Essay Films
Film series in 5 nights:
Mar 3-4,10-12, 7 pm
$5 series membership plus $5 per evening
English or German with English subtitles, large screen projections
Camera, 1028 Queen Street West, Toronto, 416 5300011, www.camerabar.ca Tickets at the door or for advance tickets please call the Stephen Bulger Gallery at 416 5040575 or at info@bulgergallery.com
Mon Mar 3, 2008, 7pm
The Inextinguishable Fire
Harun Farocki’s first movie after leaving film school combines didactics and political agitation with a sparse cinematic style. Farocki contrasts the voyeurisms of Vietnam War reporting with a didactic arrangement: a model reconstruction of napalm manufacture is followed by a playful call to revolution.
1969, 25 min., b&w
An Image
Harun Farocki chronicles the process of shooting a Playboy centerfold photo, shot in four days at a studio in Munich. The film presents all phases of the photo shoot: building the set, positioning the model and instructions by the photographer. Farocki strips the glamour and allure from the subject by focusing on the labor and orchestration behind it.
1983, 25 min., colour
As You See
The film is a short story of civil and military production. 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 depicts the history of technology as a succession of automatic phases, in which the human hand is replaced by the computer’s calculations.
1986, 72 min., b&w and colour
Tue Mar 4, 2008, 7pm
Indoctrination
This film is about a five-day seminar designed to teach executives how to “sell themselves“. This course, designed for managers, teaches the basic rules of dialectics and rhetorics and provides training in body language, gesture and facial expression. Using no titles, talking heads, narration, or other conventions of documentary, Farocki manages to expose how big business uses psychology and principles of rhetoric to sell ideas and products.
1987, 44 min., colour
Images of the World and the Inscription of War
The film has two centres of gravity. One is a photograph of a woman in Auschwitz and the other US-American aerial photography of the concentration camp. The two focal points are imbedded in a series of far-reaching, surprisingly integrated reflections on the interrelationship of measurements and photographic production. Although the pictures are often static, Farocki’s exacting eye and his commentary give them a restless, imaginary movement. Images of the World and the Inscription of War is a masterful reflection on media, representation and war.
1988, 75 min., colour
Mon Mar 10, 2008, 7pm
Videograms of a Revolution
For “Videogram of a Revolution“ Harun Farocki and his co-author Andrej Ujica collected amateur video and material broadcast by Romanian state television after it was taken over by demonstrators in December 1989. The audio and video represent the first ever historic revolution in which television played a major role. The film’s protagonist is contemporary history itself.
1992, 106 min., b&w and colour
Workers Leaving the Factory
Based on one of the Lumière brothers’ historic first films, Harun 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 hijacks them into the private sphere.
1995, 36 min., b&w and colour
Tue Mar 11, 2008, 7pm
The Interview
Farocki draws on the anxiety of unemployment as he follows the efforts of several candidates who take part in a training program designed to teach them how to apply for a job. The goal is to learn how to market and sell themsleves, a goal that Farocki exposes as demeaning and superifcial. “The Interview” gives insights into the manipulative tactics of big business, and is as provoking as it is revealing.
1997, 60 min., colour
Still Life
Classic 16th and 17th century still life paintings are edited together with documentary footage from photographic studios of the 1990s; 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-like objects.
1997, 56 min., colour
Wed Mar 12, 2008, 7pm
Prison Images
How have prisons been portrayed over the 100 years of film history? What kinds of images have been produced by prisons themselves with surveillance cameras and training videos for prison personell? In Farocki’s film the penal institution becomes an anthropological laboratory in which life and death are rehearsed in front of the camera’s unblinking eye.
2000, 60 min., b&w and colour
War at a Distance
Footage from American missiles has been famous around the world since the first Iraq war in 1991. They 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.
2003, 58 min., b&w and colour
Nothing Ventured
The film follows the negotiations between a mid-sized company and a venture capital firm. The company is looking for capital to start production on its invention. Farocki limits himself to observing events without comment. He has edited together documentary footage of the two meetings that resulted in a contract. It’s a microscopic look at one cell of today’s economy; an ethnographic portrait of a commonplace business dealing.
2004, 50 min., colour