Farocki gives us a short behind the scenes look at Straub and Huillet as they work on a film, based on America by Kafka.
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“This film is at once a self-portrait and an homage to Jean-Marie Straub, Farocki’s role model and former teacher at the Film Academy. Farocki’s admiration for Straub was so great that he said of Between Two Wars: “Perhaps I only made this film to earn Straub’s recognition.” In this observation-driven film Farocki documents the fulfillment of his wish.The film shows Farocki, under Straub’s direction, rehearsing for his role as Delamarche in the film Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations, 1983). Anyone who has seen Farocki’s documentary of the shoot will never forget these short scenes.The directing technique of Jean-Marie Straub and his wife Daniele Huillet is so repetitive and detail-obsessed that the performers are made to rehearse the scenes to the point of exhaustion. Straub manages his actors like a theater director. The very fact that it is unusual among filmmakers makes it well worth having captured Straub’s working methods on film. Farocki filmed a work of resistance against traditional cinema, against which his own films rebel.”
Tilman Baumgärtel1
- 1Tilman Baumgärtel, "Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on Franz Kafka’s “Amerika”," harunfarocki.de.