An homage to Harun Farocki, who left us too soon. I hope this memory of a wonderful summer night in Berlin testifies to his openness and generosity.

“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

“Essay, a term from written literature: unity of science and art; unity of social and individual knowledge,” Harun Farocki wrote in a first draft of the project Erzählen. The film follows two people (played by Engström and Farocki) investigating their respective subjects: one is tracing the involvement of the German heavy industry in the rise of Nazi-Germany, the other is interested in the fate of Larissa Reissner, a young Soviet writer and revolutionary. Both of them struggle with the question of how to organize their research and find a narrative structure. Their paths cross, and the film turns into an essayistic interrogation of structuralist narratology.

1995 | 00:23:00 | Germany | English | Color | Stereo
Collection: Single Titles
Tags: Autobiography, Film or Videomaking
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"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 of the 1995 exhibition The World of Photography. The film Interface (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 German 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."
--3sat television guide, September, 1995

Short film which explores the origins of napalm, it's use in the Vietnam war, and it's evil effects on society.

Based on one of the Lumière brothers’ historic first films, Harun Farocki has created a montage of scenes from 100 years of film history, all variations on the theme of “workers leaving the factory”. Farocki uses the pictures to reflect on the iconography and economy of a workers’ society, as well as that of cinema itself, which tends to acquire its audience at the gates of the factory and hijack them into the private sphere.