• Harun Farocki, Filmmaker of Modern Life, Dies at 70
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/arts/harun-farocki-filmmaker-of-modern-life-dies-at-70.html

    Mr. #Farocki made more than 100 films, many of them short experimental documentaries that explored contemporary life, and what he saw as its myriad depredations — war, imprisonment, surveillance, capitalism — through the visual stimuli that attend them.

    Ruminative, but with an undercurrent of urgency born of his longstanding social engagement, Mr. Farocki’s films sought to illuminate the ways that the technology of image-making is used to shape public ideology.

    [...]

    Mr. Farocki, who was deeply influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Jean-Luc Godard, studied at the German Film and Television Academy in West Berlin. He began making films — from the very beginning, they were non-narrative essays on the politics of imagery — in the mid-1960s.

    While Mr. Farocki’s early films were suitable for viewing on television or at the cinema, his later works were often multiscreen installations best experienced in museums or galleries. Among them was “Serious Games” (2009-10), a four-part series documenting the use of computer games and other forms of simulated reality in the training of American military recruits.

    #rip #images #documentaires #cinéma

    • Inextinguishable Fire (1969)

      How can we show you napalm in action? And how can we show you the injuries caused by napalm. If we show you pictures of napalm burns, you’ll close your eyes. First you’ll close your eyes to the pictures. Then you’ll close them to the memory. And then you’ll close your eyes to the facts. Then you’ll close your eyes to the entire context. If we show you a person with napalm burns, we will hurt your feelings. If we hurt your feelings, you’ll feel as if we’d tried napalm out on you, at your expense. We can give you only a hint of an idea of how napalm works. […] If viewers want nothing to do with the effects of napalm, then it is important to determine what they already have to do with the reasons for its use.

    • Le musée d’art moderne de Vienne avait présenté il y a 5 ou 6 ans son film sur la construction de murs. C’était envoûtant. Ces petits films sont projetés en même temps sur quatre écran. Cette oeuvre parfaite est un merveilleux chef d’oeuvre.

    • C’est au musée d’art moderne de Berlin que j’ai vu Inextinguishable fire, film sur la production de napalm par Dow Chemical et la responsabilité de ses employés. Il y était projeté aussi la série Serious Games, montrant de jeunes soldats américains apprenant à tuer sur jeux vidéo. Je sais qu’il a aussi filmé les Straub au travail sur leur Amerika – rapports de classe dans lequel il jouait (mais je ne me souviens pas quel personnage). Il y a aussi Workers leaving the factory, « compilant » certaines images de sorties d’usine dans le cinéma depuis les Lumière.
      C’est rageant que ces films soient confinés dans les musées et qu’on ait si peu de chance de les voir, de savoir même que ça existe.