Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on Franz Kafka’s “Amerika”

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 Baumgärtel)

Presented on e-flux Video & Film as the December 2022 edition of Staff Picks.

This edition of Staff Picks also coincides with the inauguration of Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art, a four-part series of screenings and discussions at e-flux Screening Room inspired by the works of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. Read more on the on the program, times, and participants here.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.