STRAUB/HUILLET AT WORK ON KAFKA’S AMERIKA
via Harun Farocki
If I had an apple I wouldn’t cross my arms
I’d like to feel a colon there
No pause just a hard caesura
We’ll pull at it till it explodes
We must destroy all the pauses
They’ll only remain below the surface
Perhaps speak in the movement
That would be the solution
This time don’t rush the word “photograph”
That was another new version
We have a rich harvest of the other version
We’ll have to take it apart
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring MD US / 12-22-10 (11:53 AM)
Initially drafted intuitively while witnessing the working process of the collaborative filmmaking duo Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet as documented by perhaps their best-known student, Harun Farocki (in his own right the auteur of over 100 films as well as a professor at UC Berkeley and now at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna). I had been aware of Straub/Huillet for many years but had never had a chance to view their work, despite the fact that Straub was involved in the French filmic community of the fifties--a friend of Francois Truffaut and assistant director for Jacques Rivette, Robert Bresson, Jean Renoir, and Abel Gance. Never quite understood what aspects of their work interfered with its circulation, but now that I've seen 4 films by Straub/Huillet and a lengthy documentary by an intriguing Portuguese director (Pedro Costa) on the making of S/H's "Sicilia!", I'm intrigued enough to attempt a companion ekphrastic text via Costa's film. Then I'll have to resort to dvd and vhs, and clips on youtube. You can sample a bit of my source (in German, no subtitles) as well as an outtake from Pedro Costa's film (in French, subtitles) at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3fjSvNsVco
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGDbXcNtaRM&feature=related
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