Harun Farocki

Directing

Harun Farocki

Born — Died

1944-01-09 — 2014-07-30

Place of birth

Neutitschein, Sudetenland

Known for

Directing

Credits

83 titles

Harun Farocki was a German filmmaker, author, and lecturer in film. He made over 90 films, the vast majority of them short experimental documentaries.

Known for

Film credits

2020s · 2 titles

2010s · 3 titles

2000s · 4 titles

Palette revisited poster
NR

Die Palette was a legendary basement bar at 55 ABC Street, where a colorful crowd of dockworkers, vagrants, students and runaways, artists and petty criminals gathered in the 1950s and early 1960s. With his novel Die Palette, published in 1968 – four years after the bar closed – Hubert Fichte created a literary monument to this venue. Conversations with former Palette regulars, pictures, and documents bring the scene of that time back to life: What did the Palette look like? What music blared from the jukebox? What about sex? And what about hitchhiking? Who, pray tell, was the sheriff? And what did that actually mean—subculture in Hamburg in the 1950s?

Palette revisited

2005

No artwork available
7.0

Only the chosen few know this woman who started working as a secretary for the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) on 13 February, 1966. The path of Helen’s career is paved with famous names – including that of Wolfgang Petersen, Holger Meins (who later became a member of the Red Army Faction) as well as directors Wolfgang Becker, Detlev Buck and Christian Petzold. All have fond memories of forgetting their troubles after having poured their hearts out over a cup of coffee in Helene’s office – for Helene was both friend and advisor to countless film students.

Who is Helene Schwarz?

2005

No artwork available
5.2

Twenty-five years after the death of Holger Meins, filmmaker and former student friend of the deceased, Gerd Conradt takes an in-depth look at the helmsman of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Who was Holger Meins? What led him into the underground? What circumstances resulted in his death, a death which made him the declared symbol of the radical opposition in Germany? What remains of his legacy?

Starbuck Holger Meins

2002

No artwork available
NR

Among the "political" filmmakers who got their start in the student movement, Harun Farocki is perhaps the most formally brilliant and conscious, and today he is exploring new documentary territory with his video installations.

Documentary filmmaking: Christoph Hübner talks with Harun Farocki

2005

1990s · 5 titles

Images of the World and the Inscription of War poster
6.7

Farocki’s intriguing and troubling film explores the processes of visual perception and how they affect our understanding of history and society. In a work reminiscent of the writings of Paul Virilio and Michel Foucault, Farocki examines a range of phenomena including aerial reconnaissance photos of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Images of the World and the Inscription of War

1991

No artwork available
NR

The revolution is as good as over, but the captain wants to send his crew into one last battle. Before this can happen, however, he is murdered. The crew is finally free. Meanwhile, the revolutionary Snow White has hidden on the ship, but she is discovered.

Navy Cut

1993

Interface poster
6.5

Harun Farocki was commissioned by the Lille Museum of Modern Art to produce a video 'about his work'. His creation was an installation for two screens that was presented within the scope for the 1995 exhibition The World of Photography. The work Schnittstelle developed out of that installation. Reflecting on Farocki's own documentary work, it examines the question of what it means to work with existing images rather than producing one's own, new images. The title plays on the double meaning of 'Schnitt', referring both to Farocki's workplace, the editing table, as well as the 'human-machine interface', where a person operates a computer using a keyboard and a mouse.

Interface

1995

The Expression of Hands poster
6.2

Historically, the cinema close-up was initially employed to convey emotions through facial expressions. But soon filmmakers also began focusing their attention on hands. Using film extracts, Farocki explores this visual language, its symbolism, Freudian slips, automatisms and its music. Often, hands betray an emotion which the face tries to dissimulate. They can also function as a conduit (exchanging money) or witness to a form of competence (work).

The Expression of Hands

1997

Workers Leaving the Factory poster
6.4

Using one of the Lumière Brothers' first films of workers leaving the Factory as his starting point, Farocki provides an insight to changes in industrial production, workers' strikes and motion pictures-- via images of workers leaving factories throughout the years.

Workers Leaving the Factory

1995

1980s · 9 titles

Class Relations poster
6.8

A young man, recently arrived in New York from Europe, becomes swept up in a series of events that are beyond his knowledge or control.

Class Relations

1984

No artwork available
10.0

Henry Angst receives a farewell letter that promises an unspeakably cheerful death and calls his previous life into question. As a result, he leaves his wife and gives up his job. In a hotel room, he plays heads and tails and chooses the random path. The next day he meets Rita, a young woman whose contradictory nature attracts him.

Henry Angst

1980

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film Based on Franz Kafka’s Amerika poster
6.4

This film is at once a self-portrait and an homage to Jean-Marie Straub, Farocki's role model and former teacher at the Film Academy.

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film Based on Franz Kafka’s Amerika

1983

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Zeit der langen Nächte

1981

"Kino 81" - Stillness, a film magazine by film critics poster
NR

An issue of the magazine Kino 81, designed for the film department of WDR by staff of FILMKRITIK

"Kino 81" - Stillness, a film magazine by film critics

1981

No artwork available
NR

An introduction to films by Peter Weiss: "Study II" (1952) "Study IV" (1954)" According to the Law" (1957) "Shaded Faces" (1956 ) "What should we do now? "(1958).

Filme von Peter Weiss

1982

Straub/Huillet: Work on "Class Relations" poster
NR

A behind the scenes film of Class Relations.

Straub/Huillet: Work on "Class Relations"

1983

Schlagworte – Schlagbilder. Ein Gespräch mit Vilém Flusser poster
6.5

Harun Farocki sits down with Vilém Flusser to discuss the front page of the German tabloid newspaper Bild Zeitung.

Schlagworte – Schlagbilder. Ein Gespräch mit Vilém Flusser

1986

Georg K. Glaser – Writer and Smith poster
6.2

Portrait of Georg Glaser, who is a writer in the mornings and a blacksmith in the afternoons.

Georg K. Glaser – Writer and Smith

1988

1970s · 11 titles

Cinématon poster
4.9

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

Cinématon

1978

Es stirbt allerdings ein jeder, fragt sich nur wie und wie Du gelebt hast (Holger Meins) poster
7.1

A look into the life of Holger Meins, the German cinematography student who became a revolutionary and a prominent voice in the Vietnam War protest movement. This film is comprised of interviews with his associates.

Es stirbt allerdings ein jeder, fragt sich nur wie und wie Du gelebt hast (Holger Meins)

1976

Putting Things Straight poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Putting Things Straight

1979

A Picture of Sarah Schumann poster
9.0

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. (harunfarocki.de)

A Picture of Sarah Schumann

1978

Something Self Explanatory (15x) poster
10.0

An educational film about an aspect of political economy. The concepts of use value, barter value and labor as a commodity are the subjects; they are intended to introduce the process of understanding the theory of value of work and the law of values, alienation and fetish.

Something Self Explanatory (15x)

1971

No artwork available
NR

Straschek's film points to the gap between workers and intellectuals and describes the "difficulties of the revolution" in a biting and witty way.

Zum Begriff des 'kritischen Kommunismus' bei Antonio Labriola (1843-1904)

1970

Kampf um ein Kind poster
7.0

A West Berlin doctor, married with a two-year-old child, leaves her husband to go to Munich to work in the birth clinic of a hospital. Her husband doesn’t know that she’s pregnant with their second child. Will she have to choose between motherhood and her career?

Kampf um ein Kind

1975

Die Teilung aller Tage poster
NR

A worker is sitting at a conveyor belt on which light bulbs are coming in at regular intervals. He takes the light bulbs from the conveyor belt and inserts them into a testing device. The light bulbs light up briefly and bathe the scene in glistening light. The worker puts the light bulb back on the conveyor belt, looks directly into the camera and shouts against the noise of the machines: "We create wealth."

Die Teilung aller Tage

1970

No artwork available
6.0

Essay film about Franz Kafka's novel "Amerika".

"Amerika" vor Augen oder Kafka in 43 Min. 30 Sec.

1978

About ‘Song of Ceylon’ by Basil Wright poster
NR

Song of Ceylon was commissioned for the short-lived German TV-series Telekritik and broadcasted in 1975. In Telekritik documentary approaches were analysed and made available for a critique of contemporary TV, its aesthetics and modes of production. Other authors for the series include Hartmut Bitomsky, Rainer Gansera and Klaus Wildenhahn.In the 30-minute movie, Farocki shows and comments on excerpts from the film Song of Ceylon by Basil Wright (and a short segment of Eisenstein's Mexico-fragments). Farocki's voice-over describes part of the movie, focussing on details and montage. He also uses didactic and descriptive drawings and intertitles to confront the classic documentary and its stylistic approaches with contemporary TV.

About ‘Song of Ceylon’ by Basil Wright

1975

Between Two Wars poster
6.5

A film about the time of the blast furnaces – 1917–1933 – about the development of an industry, about perfect machinery which had to run itself to the point of its own destruction.

Between Two Wars

1978

1960s · 6 titles

Their Newspapers poster
7.0

Ihre Zeitungen is a political film rooted in the 1968 student campaign against the Springer press group, which controlled popular dailies such as the Berliner Zeitung and the Bild Zeitung. Claiming the latter were manipulating public opinion, the students laid siege to the publisher's offices. These events made a strong impression on the German collective conscience, and it's in this context that Farocki made this "agit-prop" film.

Their Newspapers

1968

3000 Houses poster
9.0

“Six young people move through a city in order to establish the starting point of their joint action. But they can’t agree on the topic. In the end everybody goes their own way and leaves the city.” - Hartmut Bitomsky

3000 Houses

1967

Break the Power of the Manipulators poster
NR

Documentary by Helke Sander, in collaboration with Harun Farocki (among others), about the campaign of the West German New Left against the publishing house Springer, particularly its control and manipulation of the news.

Break the Power of the Manipulators

1968

The Inextinguishable Fire poster
6.2

An austere treatise on the military-industrial complex that produces napalm.

The Inextinguishable Fire

1969

No artwork available
NR

A documentary about the events at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb) in November 1968, which led to the termination of the training contracts of 18 students. While Director Heinz Rathsack dictates to his secretary Helene Schwarz the letter lifting the ban from the premises against 18 students, the students plan a general assembly inside the dffb despite the ban.

Wochenschau I: Requiem für eine Firma

1969

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Farocki dreht

1967

Series credits

Behind the camera

Barbara poster
7.1

Exiled to a rural clinic in 1980s East Germany for seeking an exit visa, a disillusioned doctor maintains a guarded distance from her colleagues, unsure if the kindly head physician is a genuine ally or a Stasi informant.

Barbara

2012

Memories poster
5.5

Previously focused on Asian directors, “Jeonju Digital Project 2007” takes a look at Europe. The Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, the German filmmaker Harun Farocki, and the French filmmaker Eugène Green participated in this project.

Memories

2007

Memories poster
5.5

Previously focused on Asian directors, “Jeonju Digital Project 2007” takes a look at Europe. The Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, the German filmmaker Harun Farocki, and the French filmmaker Eugène Green participated in this project.

Memories

2007

Ghosts poster
6.1

Nina, a mentally ill teenage orphan, starts a new job as a garden cleaner when she meets Toni. They fall in love but soon Toni starts betraying Nina. Meanwhile, Francoise is picked up at a Berlin psychiatric hospital by her husband, Pierre. After spotting Nina, Francoise believes that she has found her kidnapped daughter Marie, but no one believes her.

Ghosts

2005

The State I Am In poster
6.8

Clara and Hans are left-wing terrorists who have been sought by police for almost fifteen years. Their increasingly rebellious daughter Jeanne begins to pose a threat to their security when she falls in love with a boy she meets on the beach.

The State I Am In

2001

Übertragung poster
6.3

Examines monuments scattered all over the world that have become goals for pilgrims and tourists and now serve to meet a whole range of different needs, from personal memory to spiritual enlightenment and religious sentiment. Farocki starts from the Vietnam Memorial in Washington ... thousands of people visit it every day, touch the letters and trace the names of family and friends in an attempt to establish a link between their own lives and the past. Other objects of pilgrimage – including the foot of the statue of the Apostle in St Peter’s and the Bocca della Verità in Rome as well as the devil’s footprint in the Frauenkirche in Munich and the monument in the Buchenwald concentration camp – meet the same need for understanding and purification. Stone is the material in which the collective memory of a life or an event in the past is immortalized and becomes an object of worship. At the same time, the memory of thousands of visitors is preserved in the traces of wear it displays.

Übertragung

2007

Still Life poster
7.1

According to Harun Farocki, today's photographers working in advertising are, in a way, continuing the tradition of 17th century Flemish painters in that they depict objects from everyday life - the "still life". The filmmaker illustrates this intriguing hypothesis with three documentary sequences which show the photographers at work creating a contemporary "still life": a cheese-board, beer glasses and an expensive watch.

Still Life

1997

Still Life poster
7.1

According to Harun Farocki, today's photographers working in advertising are, in a way, continuing the tradition of 17th century Flemish painters in that they depict objects from everyday life - the "still life". The filmmaker illustrates this intriguing hypothesis with three documentary sequences which show the photographers at work creating a contemporary "still life": a cheese-board, beer glasses and an expensive watch.

Still Life

1997

In Comparison poster
6.6

In Comparison revisits issues explored in the director's 2007 two channel installation Comparison Via a Third. Spanning continents and cultures, the film focuses on the brick in its many contexts, from the collective efforts of a community building a clinic in Burkina Faso, through semi industrialized moldings in India, to industrial production lines in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland. Through its notable structure and its captivating rhythms, In Comparison presents various methods of labor production, allowing for an assessment that changes with every layer and goes well beyond a simple binary divide.

In Comparison

2009

In Comparison poster
6.6

In Comparison revisits issues explored in the director's 2007 two channel installation Comparison Via a Third. Spanning continents and cultures, the film focuses on the brick in its many contexts, from the collective efforts of a community building a clinic in Burkina Faso, through semi industrialized moldings in India, to industrial production lines in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland. Through its notable structure and its captivating rhythms, In Comparison presents various methods of labor production, allowing for an assessment that changes with every layer and goes well beyond a simple binary divide.

In Comparison

2009

In Comparison poster
6.6

In Comparison revisits issues explored in the director's 2007 two channel installation Comparison Via a Third. Spanning continents and cultures, the film focuses on the brick in its many contexts, from the collective efforts of a community building a clinic in Burkina Faso, through semi industrialized moldings in India, to industrial production lines in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland. Through its notable structure and its captivating rhythms, In Comparison presents various methods of labor production, allowing for an assessment that changes with every layer and goes well beyond a simple binary divide.

In Comparison

2009

Images of the World and the Inscription of War poster
6.7

Farocki’s intriguing and troubling film explores the processes of visual perception and how they affect our understanding of history and society. In a work reminiscent of the writings of Paul Virilio and Michel Foucault, Farocki examines a range of phenomena including aerial reconnaissance photos of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Images of the World and the Inscription of War

1991

Images of the World and the Inscription of War poster
6.7

Farocki’s intriguing and troubling film explores the processes of visual perception and how they affect our understanding of history and society. In a work reminiscent of the writings of Paul Virilio and Michel Foucault, Farocki examines a range of phenomena including aerial reconnaissance photos of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Images of the World and the Inscription of War

1991

Images of the World and the Inscription of War poster
6.7

Farocki’s intriguing and troubling film explores the processes of visual perception and how they affect our understanding of history and society. In a work reminiscent of the writings of Paul Virilio and Michel Foucault, Farocki examines a range of phenomena including aerial reconnaissance photos of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Images of the World and the Inscription of War

1991

About Narration poster
8.0

Interdisciplinary studies put into practice is a plane on which HaF's interests and mine coincide. Ideas of fictional research projects in films emerge very early on, or of film as research device, allowing people from different disciplines to come together and discover something, to pursue a line of thought, or just be adventurous. These ideas correspond to a tendency we both have of accumulating knowledge from different sciences, for example so as to bring exact sciences like medicine together with subjects which aren't directly aimed at application, such as religious studies or anthropology.

About Narration

2025

Bent or Broken poster
9.0

A darkly comedic exploration of personal struggle and societal pressure, we follow the story of a middle-aged man named Max, who is trapped in a life of monotony and frustration. After a series of unexpected events, Max finds himself in increasingly absurd and challenging situations, forcing him to confront his own limitations and fears. With sharp humor and a critique of societal expectations, the film delves into the pressures that shape our lives and the lengths we go to in order to break free from them. A poignant yet quirky tale about bending to life's demands or breaking under the weight of it all.

Bent or Broken

1975

Bedtime Stories: Cat poster
NR

"As if pictures could think! Einschlafgeschichten doesn't really speak of bridges or railroads but rather of two girls filling the space between daytime and dreamtime with a poetic game, an endless game, a game with no end. A game which can fade out without becoming fragmentary. "Are you asleep?", one of them asks at the end of a clip – and the final shot is of the two, asleep; the game is over. The girls are played by Lara and Anna, Farocki's daughters." - Hans J. Wulff

Bedtime Stories: Cat

1977

No artwork available
NR

A soliloquy by Robert de Niro. The ever same image, the words in seven languages.

Dubbing

2006

Their Newspapers poster
7.0

Ihre Zeitungen is a political film rooted in the 1968 student campaign against the Springer press group, which controlled popular dailies such as the Berliner Zeitung and the Bild Zeitung. Claiming the latter were manipulating public opinion, the students laid siege to the publisher's offices. These events made a strong impression on the German collective conscience, and it's in this context that Farocki made this "agit-prop" film.

Their Newspapers

1968

Their Newspapers poster
7.0

Ihre Zeitungen is a political film rooted in the 1968 student campaign against the Springer press group, which controlled popular dailies such as the Berliner Zeitung and the Bild Zeitung. Claiming the latter were manipulating public opinion, the students laid siege to the publisher's offices. These events made a strong impression on the German collective conscience, and it's in this context that Farocki made this "agit-prop" film.

Their Newspapers

1968

Before Your Eyes - Vietnam poster
7.0

An unconventional essay film that interrogates the visual and ideological legacy of the Vietnam War. Blending staged scenes, archival footage, photographs, and philosophical dialogue, the film follows various characters — including an American soldier captured by North Vietnamese villagers — as they reflect on violence, memory, and image-making. Set partly in West Berlin and partly in reconstructed spaces representing Vietnam, the film avoids traditional dramatic narrative in favor of a fragmented montage of voices, documents, and reenactments. Interweaving love stories, political debate, and historical commentary, Farocki creates a critical reflection on how war is represented, seen, and imagined, both in cinema and in public consciousness. The result is a complex meditation on images as weapons and instruments of perception.

Before Your Eyes - Vietnam

1982

The Double Face of Peter Lorre poster
5.8

Peter Lorre achieved international fame for his performance in the myth-making role in M. This character has held a peculiar fascination for generations of cinephiles. However, at the time, whilst such success meant recognition, it also weighed on the Hungarian actor as a constrictive burden. Using photographs and film extracts, Das doppelte Gesicht reconstructs the ups and downs of Lorre's career, taking into consideration the economic imperatives and workings of the film industry at the time. (Arnold Hohmann, 1984)

The Double Face of Peter Lorre

1984

The Double Face of Peter Lorre poster
5.8

Peter Lorre achieved international fame for his performance in the myth-making role in M. This character has held a peculiar fascination for generations of cinephiles. However, at the time, whilst such success meant recognition, it also weighed on the Hungarian actor as a constrictive burden. Using photographs and film extracts, Das doppelte Gesicht reconstructs the ups and downs of Lorre's career, taking into consideration the economic imperatives and workings of the film industry at the time. (Arnold Hohmann, 1984)

The Double Face of Peter Lorre

1984

The Double Face of Peter Lorre poster
5.8

Peter Lorre achieved international fame for his performance in the myth-making role in M. This character has held a peculiar fascination for generations of cinephiles. However, at the time, whilst such success meant recognition, it also weighed on the Hungarian actor as a constrictive burden. Using photographs and film extracts, Das doppelte Gesicht reconstructs the ups and downs of Lorre's career, taking into consideration the economic imperatives and workings of the film industry at the time. (Arnold Hohmann, 1984)

The Double Face of Peter Lorre

1984

Interface poster
6.5

Harun Farocki was commissioned by the Lille Museum of Modern Art to produce a video 'about his work'. His creation was an installation for two screens that was presented within the scope for the 1995 exhibition The World of Photography. The work Schnittstelle developed out of that installation. Reflecting on Farocki's own documentary work, it examines the question of what it means to work with existing images rather than producing one's own, new images. The title plays on the double meaning of 'Schnitt', referring both to Farocki's workplace, the editing table, as well as the 'human-machine interface', where a person operates a computer using a keyboard and a mouse.

Interface

1995

Interface poster
6.5

Harun Farocki was commissioned by the Lille Museum of Modern Art to produce a video 'about his work'. His creation was an installation for two screens that was presented within the scope for the 1995 exhibition The World of Photography. The work Schnittstelle developed out of that installation. Reflecting on Farocki's own documentary work, it examines the question of what it means to work with existing images rather than producing one's own, new images. The title plays on the double meaning of 'Schnitt', referring both to Farocki's workplace, the editing table, as well as the 'human-machine interface', where a person operates a computer using a keyboard and a mouse.

Interface

1995

Interface poster
6.5

Harun Farocki was commissioned by the Lille Museum of Modern Art to produce a video 'about his work'. His creation was an installation for two screens that was presented within the scope for the 1995 exhibition The World of Photography. The work Schnittstelle developed out of that installation. Reflecting on Farocki's own documentary work, it examines the question of what it means to work with existing images rather than producing one's own, new images. The title plays on the double meaning of 'Schnitt', referring both to Farocki's workplace, the editing table, as well as the 'human-machine interface', where a person operates a computer using a keyboard and a mouse.

Interface

1995

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film Based on Franz Kafka’s Amerika poster
6.4

This film is at once a self-portrait and an homage to Jean-Marie Straub, Farocki's role model and former teacher at the Film Academy.

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film Based on Franz Kafka’s Amerika

1983

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film Based on Franz Kafka’s Amerika poster
6.4

This film is at once a self-portrait and an homage to Jean-Marie Straub, Farocki's role model and former teacher at the Film Academy.

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film Based on Franz Kafka’s Amerika

1983

Betrayed poster
9.0

A “film-noir” on double identity and role reversal. A man is looking for a woman to love. He finds her in a seedy bar and persuades her to marry him. The day she decides to flee… he kills her. To ward off suspicion, he moves in with the sister of the deceased.

Betrayed

1985

Betrayed poster
9.0

A “film-noir” on double identity and role reversal. A man is looking for a woman to love. He finds her in a seedy bar and persuades her to marry him. The day she decides to flee… he kills her. To ward off suspicion, he moves in with the sister of the deceased.

Betrayed

1985

The Creators of the Shopping Worlds poster
6.5

A look at how mall producers design malls in order to maximise traffic and sales.

The Creators of the Shopping Worlds

2001

The Creators of the Shopping Worlds poster
6.5

A look at how mall producers design malls in order to maximise traffic and sales.

The Creators of the Shopping Worlds

2001

The Creators of the Shopping Worlds poster
6.5

A look at how mall producers design malls in order to maximise traffic and sales.

The Creators of the Shopping Worlds

2001

White Christmas poster
5.7

One of the many films drawing a connection between Christmas and war. It is unclear whether the longing for a white Christmas is being taken seriously, or whether it is intended as a denunciation. In either event, America's war in Vietnam is denounced.

White Christmas

1968

White Christmas poster
5.7

One of the many films drawing a connection between Christmas and war. It is unclear whether the longing for a white Christmas is being taken seriously, or whether it is intended as a denunciation. In either event, America's war in Vietnam is denounced.

White Christmas

1968

Bedtime Stories: Railways poster
NR

"As if pictures could think! Einschlafgeschichten doesn't really speak of bridges or railroads but rather of two girls filling the space between daytime and dreamtime with a poetic game, an endless game, a game with no end. A game which can fade out without becoming fragmentary. "Are you asleep?", one of them asks at the end of a clip – and the final shot is of the two, asleep; the game is over. The girls are played by Lara and Anna, Farocki's daughters." - Hans J. Wulff

Bedtime Stories: Railways

1977

The Appearance poster
6.6

An advertising agency has to pitch a marketing concept to an optician's consortium, represented by the manager who is the first to see the campaign. The logo submitted is examined from every angle: it must simultaneously express both the company's dynamism and its reliability. A fascinating, dispassionate glimpse behind closed doors, where every detail is dramatized to win that lucrative contract.

The Appearance

1996

Aufstellung poster
10.0

The diagrams used to help represent consumer shopping baskets, the pensions deficit or migration are anachronistic, Farocki posits; Whether pictographs or simple bar or pie charts, their abstractions all display an impotence of information. "Examples of diagrams gleaned from newspapers, school text books and official publications are [...] the history of migration in the Federal Republic of Germany. What we are seeking, therefore, is a conceptual critique of the ways in which migration is presented, pursuing the icons and symbols back to their origins and examining them with regard to content they themselves are unaware of." -HF

Aufstellung

2005

A Picture of Sarah Schumann poster
9.0

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. (harunfarocki.de)

A Picture of Sarah Schumann

1978