Films 1979

1979

Industrie und Fotografie
Farocki frequently chooses a single news photo as his pretext. In his film he explains convincingly that 'learning from images' is not so much a question of having power over the image or a consistent subject-position towards the image, which would allow the filmmaker access to complete knowledge. Instead he insists on pursuing photography's separation of reference and discourse, by proving this to be a separation of the subject as well as a separation within the subject itself. The modern notion of representation, at least that which we owe to cinema, is based on iconicity, similarity and probability. View More »

1979

Anna und Lara machen das Fernsehen vor und nach
My daughters were eleven years old at the time. They sat down behind a television set without a tube and played out the news, weather, shows and commercials. This film is now missing, which makes me very sad. (Harun Farocki)

1979

Single. Eine Schallplatte wird produziert
Single is not a theoretical treatise; it just uses clips to show how a single is produced. The song is "Time to Love", the singers call themselves Witchcraft. Also involved are the composer, arranger, producer, the studio musicians and later on the strings.At the beginning the off camera narrator points out a scandalous discrepancy. The film crew spent two days in the recording studio observing a three minute piece of music being produced. The film itself condenses the duration of production: 15 minutes into the film, the narrator announces that the producers are satisfied with the basic backing-track, after a four hour test. View More »

1979

Zur Ansicht: Peter Weiss
We were visiting Peter Weiss in Stockholm on 17th and 18th June 1979. We talked about his work on the book The Aesthetics of Resistance. Two volumes have already been published and P.W. is currently on the third. He has been working on it for over ten years and not one sentence is unfounded. Weiss has performed an unbelievable amount of research, studied the lives of people serving as models down to the tiniest detail, and attaches great importance to visiting the scenes of the action. The film gives an impression of his work. (Harun Farocki in: 10. Internationales Forum des Jungen Films, Berlin-West, Informationsblatt)

1979

Der Geschmack des Lebens
The Taste of Life
For years I've been looking for the means to capture everyday life just as it is perceived through a glance from the street. Twenty years ago, you could see young people standing with their bicycles on street corners, in fact, if the bicycles whrere there, you could be sure to find the young people standing there talking. I would like to document these kinds of events. On this occasion, I was presented with the opportunity to do so. For two and a half weeks, I walked around different parts of the city with my camera and collected images for the film. (Harun Farocki, 1979)