Films 1966

1966

Zwei Wege
Farocki's very first film, this short piece for the television station Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) is highly relevant to his later work. Zwei Wege is a description of a picture! Farocki shows us an image of an oil painting, a religious allegory showing the 'right' and the 'wrong' path for a Christian. The one path leads to heaven, the other to hell. Farocki uses the camera in effect to dissect the picture; he shows close-ups of the paintings various motifs, which he underscores with rhymes. This method of breaking down an image with the camera reminds us of similar sequences in his essay films, Wie man sieht and Bilder der Welt, both from the eighties. (Tilman Baumgärtel)

1966

Jeder ein Berliner Kindl
Jeder ein Berliner Kindl was the first film Farocki made at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. The film deals with advertising for Berliner Kindl, a local beer. "It is a matter of the act of self-refutation, an act which is, however, far more than an ironically positioned, merely aesthetic 'gesture' - it is evidently related to the manner in which one approaches politics, political speeches and political semiotics. […] The joke is that it is precisely the same inclination to disagree with himself which made 1960s Farocki films somewhat unwieldy, perhaps even ineffective, for the 1968 movement of 'revolutionary workers, students and pupils', that thirty years later has resulted in their being rather effective items. (Klaus Kreimeier)