Cinerevolt: 2 Films by Harun Farocki

This month Cinerevolt returns to highlight the experimental and propagandistic work of German filmmaker Harun Farocki.

The Inextinguishable Fire (1969)

"When we show you pictures of napalm victims, you'll shut your eyes. 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."

These words are spoken at the beginning of an agitprop film that can be viewed as a unique and remarkable development. Farocki refrains from making any sort of emotional appeal. His point of departure is the following: "When napalm is burning, it is too late to extinguish it. You have to fight napalm where it is produced: in the factories."

Resolutely, Farocki names names: the manufacturer is Dow Chemical, based in Midland, Michigan in the United States. Against backdrops suggesting the laboratories and offices of this corporation, the film then proceeds to educate us with an austerity reminiscent of Jean Marie Straub. Farocki's development unfolds: "(1) A major corporation is like a construction set. It can be used to put together the whole world. (2) Because of the growing division of labor, many people no longer recognize the role they play in producing mass destruction. (3) That which is manufactured in the end is the product of the workers, students, and engineers."

Eine Sache, die sich versteht (1971)

One thing that goes without saying is an educational film about a section of political economy. The subject matter of instruction is the concepts of use value, exchange value, commodity, labor power; they are intended to initiate the process of understanding the labor theory of value and the law of value, alienation and fetish.