Harun Farocki
(B.1944, Nový Jicin (Neutitschein), Czechoslovakia // D.Berlin, 2014)- Parallel I-IV, 2014
- War Tropes, 2011
- The Silver and the Cross, 2010
- Serious Games, 2010
- Transmission, 2007
- Deep Play, 2007
- Vergleich über ein Drittes / Comparison via a Third, 2007
- Zur Bauweise des Films bei Griffith's Film / On Construction of Griffith's Films, 2006
- Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik in elf Jahrzehnten / Workers Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades, 2006
- Hörstationen / Listening Stations, 2006
- Synchronisation / Dubbing, 2006
- Aufstellung / In Formation, 2005
- Gegen-Musik / Counter-Music, 2005
- Drei Montagen / Three Assembles, 2005
- Ausweg / A way, 2005
- Serie: Auge / Machine, Eye / Machine III, 2003
- Serie: Auge / Machine, Eye / Machine II, 2001
- Serie: Auge / Machine, Eye / Machine I, 2000
- The Expression of Hands, 1997
- Workers Leaving the Factory, 1995
- A Day in the Life of a Consumer, 1993
- Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet at Work on Franz Kafka's, 1983
- An Image, 1983
- Some problems of anti-authoritarian and anti-imperialist urban warfare in the case of West Berlin or: Their Newspapers, 1968
- The Words of the Chairman, 1967
- Two Paths / Zwei Wege, 1966
Workers Leaving the Factory, 1995
Video-BetaSp, color and b/w transferred to digital file Original version with English subtitles + version with Spanish subtitles Ed. 2/10
Ratio image 4:3. 36'
Workers Leaving the Factory – such was the title of the first cinema film ever shown in public. For 45 seconds, this still existant sequence depicts workers at the photographic products factory in Lyon owned by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière hurrying, closely packed, out of the shadows of the factory gates and into the afternoon sun. Only here, in departing, are the workers visible as a social group. But where are they going? To a meeting? To the barricades? Or simply home? These questions have preoccupied generations of documentary filmmakers. For the space before the factory gates has always been the scene of social conflicts. And furthermore, this sequence has become an icon of the narrative medium in the history of the cinema.
In this film Farocki explores this scene right through the history of film. The result of this effort is a fascinating cinematographic analysis in the medium of cinematography itself, ranging in scope from Chaplin's Modern Times to Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accattone! Farocki's film shows that the Lumière brothers' sequence already carries within itself the germ of a foreseeable social development: the eventual disappearance of this form of industrial labor.