Film Archive

Jahr

Retrospective 2021
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Respite
Harun Farocki
Material from the Nazi Jewish transit camp Westerbork. Every road from here lead to death, including for the cameraman. Farocki analyzes the silent sequences: surgery on the narrative.
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Respite

Aufschub
Harun Farocki
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
Germany,
South Korea
2007
40 minutes
German captions
Subtitles: 
None

Anyone interned in the Nazi Jewish transit and collection camp Westerbork in the occupied Netherlands faced death: The trains left to Auschwitz from here, to Sobibór. In 1944, the camp commander ordered the prisoner and cameraman Rudolf Breslauer, who was murdered shortly afterwards, to film the camp, presumably as visual evidence of his own “work performance”. Harun Farocki, West German doyen of essayistic image criticism, used the surviving silent material to compose an equally silent sequence analysis commented only in title cards. It is surgery on the hidden narrative, not open heart surgery.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Harun Farocki
Script
Harun Farocki
Cinematographer
Rudolf Breslauer
Editor
Lars Pienkoß, Harun Farocki
Producer
Harun Farocki