Learning Farocki

IFFR 2020

Five decades of Harun Farocki's film and video material transformed into an audiovisual vocabulary, teaching key Farockian concepts from A to Z.

Deep Focus

Regained

Harun Farocki: Lexicon

Point of departure is an unfinished script for a never-realised play, written by Bertolt Brecht during his exile in Stockholm 1939-40.

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This desktop investigation asks: how can one begin to learn about Farocki? A naive search for his name online is already revealing.

This desktop investigation asks: how can one begin to learn about Farocki? Starting with a naive search for his name online, this film scans over his body of work and asks how one should begin to watch it. By using different methods to make sense of Farocki's images, a key concept emerges: the counter-image.

Harun Farocki: The Counter-Image

Drawing upon cinematic memories: restored classics, films about film(makers), experimental works and installations.

A journey through the life and work of Jan Švankmajer, last remaining hero of surrealism, who occupies a unique place in the history of cinema.

Over a period of three years, the directors followed the life of Jan Švankmajer, shedding light on his creative principles, as well as his collaboration with old friend and producer Jaromír Kallista. The film is also haunted by the memory of Eva Švankmajerová, his wife and creative partner, muse and inseparable other half.

Athanor – The Alchemical Furnace

Using found web fragments and images of young Tsahal soldiers enjoying trance music, a Palestinian teenager searches for her identity.

The White Elephant

Zwei Wegeis a description of an oil painting. Farocki uses the camera in effect to dissect a religious allegory.

<strong>Zwei Wege</strong> is a description of an oil painting. Farocki uses the camera in effect to dissect a religious allegory.

Zwei Wege

James Ballard's near-fatal car accident gives rise to extreme desires. Cult film by Cronenberg in which car fetishists go to extremes to satisfy their passion.

Following an almost fatal car accident, James Ballard becomes obsessed by wild, dangerous sex. He soon meets a bunch of like-minded people: car fetishists who re-enact famous fatal crashes, like James Dean's. Controversial, award-winning cult film in which Cronenberg uncompromisingly brings technology crashing into the human psyche.

Crash

Harun Farocki appears in 24 of his own films. His time on screen totals 2 hours and 21 minutes, enough to form a movie in itself.

Harun Farocki: Presented

Vermeer's paintings open up a path to love in the capitalist rat race of New York. But its course does not run smoothly.

A stock exchange trader falls in love with a French actress who looks like the Vermeer portraits he so admires. At first, art seems to be a bridge between them; a sole source of purity in capitalist New York. But ultimately this proves to be an ideal that cannot be projected onto reality.

All the Vermeers in New York

A short parody on advertising Farocki made as a film student, before he was expelled from the Deutsche Film und Fernsehenakademie Berlin (DFFB).

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025