Films 1978

1978

Ein Bild von Sarah Schumann
This Harun Farocki film shows the creation of a picture on which the artist worked for nine weeks. Sarah Schumann lives in Berlin and is a pioneer of the feminist scene. 1977 together with several other artists she organized the first large exhibition in which only work by women was shown. Sarah Schumann paints figuratively, that is to say she has developed a technique using layers of collage and painting worked on top of and into one another. Regarding a picture becomes an adventure. (WDR, Program information 1978)

1978

Zwischen zwei Kriegen
Between Two Wars
SA film about the time of the blast furnances - 1917 - 1933 - about the development of an industry, about a perfect machinery which had to run itself to the point of its own destruction. The essay from the Berlin filmmaker, Harun Farocki, on heavy industry and the gas of the blast furnace, convinces through the author's cool abstraction and manic obsession and through the utilization of a single example of the self-destructive character of capitalistic production: "The image of the blust furnace gas is real and metaphoric; an energy blows away uselessly into the air. Guided through a system of pipes, the pressure increases. Hence, a valve is needed. That valve is the production of war materiel." Between To Wars is also a film about the strains of filmmaking and a reflection on craft and creation. Farocki distances himself radically from the thoughtless sloppiness of average television work. The clarity and the precise ordering of his black and white images, which do not illustrate thoughts but are themselves thoughts, are reminiscent of the late Godard. The poverty of this film - its production took six years - is at the same time its strength. (Hans C. Blumenberg, Die Zeit, February 2, 1979)

1978

Zu "Zwischen zwei Kriegen"
On "Between Two Wars"
A piece for a magazine program, in which Farocki discusses his film Between Two Wars. (production statement)

1978

Häuser 1 - 2
In November 1976 I had an idea for Sesamstraße. I noted down images of destroyed houses and intact ones, ruins of war and those from peacetime, country-houses and town-houses, houses in cities holding out the promise of a country life or of an urban death. In February 1977 I got the go-ahead to film a few sections totalling seven minutes. This reduction had already effectively destroyed the topic's substance; the beauty of the dichotomous method would only have become apparent had it been possible to prove that it is thus that the foundations are laid for the comprehension of all houses. (Harun Farocki)

1978