In the notes for 1983’s An Image, a fly-on-the-wall dissection of a German Playboy shoot, Harun Farocki explains his method for gaining access to sensitive locations, which involves a kind of dual deception, his backers expecting condemnation, his subjects expecting praise. “I try to do neither” Farocki writes, “nor do I want to do something in between, but beyond both.”
Above: An Image.
This sense of beyond, a restless contemplation lurking beneath a veneer of apparent flatness, is present in all Farocki’s films, with their fundamentally basic depictions of mundane practices and events. They seem, at first glance, to take in these events with complete objectivity, the camera hanging back deferentially, absorbing the action without direct comment. Yet like Frederick Wiseman’s similarly low-key documents, these observations ultimately prove to be sneaky inquisitions on a variety of issues, fundamentally questions of authorship, control and authority, and how these concepts...
Above: An Image.
This sense of beyond, a restless contemplation lurking beneath a veneer of apparent flatness, is present in all Farocki’s films, with their fundamentally basic depictions of mundane practices and events. They seem, at first glance, to take in these events with complete objectivity, the camera hanging back deferentially, absorbing the action without direct comment. Yet like Frederick Wiseman’s similarly low-key documents, these observations ultimately prove to be sneaky inquisitions on a variety of issues, fundamentally questions of authorship, control and authority, and how these concepts...
- 11/2/2011
- MUBI
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