Harun Farocki
Working the Sight-lines
Distributed for Amsterdam University Press
379 pages
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32 halftones
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6-1/3 x 9-5/11
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© 2004
Filmmaker, film essayist, installation artist, writer: the Berlin artist Harun Farocki has devoted his life to the power of images. Over the thirty-plus years of his career, Farocki has explored not the images of life but rather the life of images that surrounds us in newspapers, cinema, books, television, and advertising. Harun Farocki examines, from different critical perspectives, his vast oeuvre, which includes three feature films, critical media pieces, children’s television features, “learning films” in the tradition of Brecht, and installation pieces. Interviews, a selection of Farocki’s own writings, and an annotated filmography complete a valuable biography of this pioneering artist and his legendary career.
''In the history of documentary film, Harun Farocki occupies a unique and crucial position and it is a scandal how little known his work remains. Never content with 'pure' observation, Farocki wades hip deep into reality, using a battery of techniques to unearth - not simply truth (since for Farocki truth is never simple) - but conflicts, procedures, contests over power and control of discourses. With a penetrating and critical intelligence Farocki probes ambiguities as well as deceptions, revealing both actions taken and the way actions are pre-determined by social practices. If you are looking for a model for a radical documentary practice determined to penetrate to the roots of the horrors of modern life, pass by the television smart talk of Michael Moore and engage with the powerful and demanding work of Harun Farocki.''--Tom Gunning, professor of film and media studies at the University of Chicago
Contents
Introduction
Image In(ter)ventions
Filming as Writing, Writing as Filming, Staking One's Life
Between Wars, Between Images
Documenting the Life of Ideas? - Farocki and the 'Essay Film'
Images of the World and the Inscription of War
Film: Media: Work: Archive
From the Surveillance Society to the Control Society
Acknowledgement
Farocki: A Filmography
Notes on Contributors
Index of Names
Index of Film Titles/Subjects
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