Jean-Marie Straub

Karel Pletinck, 2024
ARTICLE
10.01.2024
NL FR EN

Que des rencontrent produisent de l’art, ce n’est pas exceptionnel ; ce qui l’est, c’est qu’une loi morale soit extraite de ce hasard : la contingence engendre un impératif éthique auquel l’artiste ne peut se soustraire, « parce que l'arbre, c'était aussi Antigone. » Straub et Huillet ont pris au sérieux cet impératif qui peut paraître absurde (pourquoi ne pas planter soi-même un arbre, là où c’est nécessaire ?) mais qui est, en même temps, parfaitement logique : si le personnage principal (pas l’acteur !) meurt avant le tournage, alors le film ne peut être réalisé.

Karel Pletinck, 2024
ARTICLE
10.01.2024
NL FR EN

That encounters bring forth art is not exceptional, but a moral law being extracted from chance is: contingency brings forth an ethical imperative from which the artist cannot escape, “because this tree was also Antigone”. Straub and Huillet took this imperative seriously, an imperative that may seem absurd (why not plant a tree yourself wherever necessary?) but is at the same time perfectly logical: if the main character (not the actor!) dies before the filming starts, then the film can no longer be realised.

Karel Pletinck, 2024
PASSAGE
10.01.2024
NL FR EN

Dat ontmoetingen kunst voortbrengen is niet uitzonderlijk, wel dat een morele wet aan dat toeval wordt onttrokken: contingentie brengt een ethische imperatief voort waaraan de kunstenaar niet kan ontsnappen, “want de boom, dat was ook Antigone”. Straub en Huillet namen deze imperatief serieus, een imperatief die absurd mag lijken (waarom niet zelf een boom planten waar nodig?) maar tezelfdertijd volkomen logisch is: als het hoofdpersonage (niet de acteur!) sterft voor de opnames dan laat de film zich niet meer verwerkelijken.

Andy Rector, 2024
ARTICLE
10.01.2024
EN

In its sudden and raw appearance in 2011, Schakale und Araber felt both a “weapon of criticism” (of humanity) and a “criticism of the weapon” (video). Straub deliberately shot against the light. The sun is not sweet here but burning, the air not full but suffocating. White phosphorus, video voltage. For maybe the first time in Huillet/Straub the hoarseness of the medium passed into the material, even if to serve the subject.

Ming Tsao, 2023
ARTICLE
25.10.2023
EN

Indeed, what is called new music today has become decontextualized from tradition and history, endlessly grasping at fashionable trends, and is ultimately marching off a cliff. “Once you’ve hammered into people the idea that only what is contemporary and modern exists, be it economic fashions or the supposed political or moral coercions, then it gets to the point where the human being believes he lives better than anyone has ever lived before or ever could live. No movement occurs anymore.” For Huillet and Straub, Von heute auf morgen is “a declaration of war” against modernization to reaffirm the possibility for something truly new, indeed a new music of which Schoenberg would have been proud.

Antoine Thirion, 2023
ARTICLE
25.10.2023
EN

Where, during this “visit to the Louvre,” fifteen years after Cézanne (1989), is the painter whom Gilles Deleuze called “the Straubs’ master”? He is neither in the museum nor the series of paintings that make up this particular visit. Yet he occupies a central place through the text that a voice-over reads aloud; a material that could not be more impure, composed of memories, perforated with borrowed quotations, invented expressions, and passages of pure fiction in indirect style.

Andy Rector, 2023
ARTICLE
25.10.2023
EN

It would be foolish to call this picture minimalist, for even if its rich sound (a baby cries on the line “…the collective hate” in version A) were turned off, one could be fascinated by the violent changes of color in wardrobe and sunlight, here effected by jump cuts – yet another cinematographic vein Straub has tapped for both sudden and gradual excitation. Fascination, magic, and belief are part of Huillet/Straub’s cinema, too, occurring amid their total opposite – analysis, critical faculty, errant thought – and back again. One may feel upon leaving the theater a sharpening of the senses.

Elke Marhöfer, 2023
ARTICLE
25.10.2023
EN

Gilles Deleuze remarked that your image is a “stone” and your take is a “tomb”. The earth is abandoned and yet, as it were, it is filled with generations of corpses. When, for example, towards the end of Operai, contadini, you make a long sweeping pan across the hillside, the physical space comes across as being strangely humanised in the light of what was said beforehand. The hillside seems to be populated by people. Hence history becomes the humanization of nature. What is “human” in this panning shot, and what is “nature”?

Nicole Brenez, 2023
ARTICLE
25.10.2023
EN

Jean-Marie Straub, a fighter of images and sounds, chose a paragraph corresponding to the beginning of Bernanos’ pamphlet. He did not change a word. He used two versions of the same shot, each with full credits. At the start of the first version, twilight, a swan accompanies actor Christophe Clavert as he walks along the lake reciting Bernanos’ text, and then it disappears. At the end of the second version, brighter, a swan appears, passes the motionless actor, and drifts off to the left. The swans are among us, Nature will prevail, and the film offers this final gesture of unprecedented optimism – perhaps so that we can carry on, that is to say, fight, just a little longer.

Daniel Fairfax, 2023
ARTICLE
25.10.2023
EN

Shots like this may not commonly be considered as examples of the plan straubien, but the numbers shown on screen possess the same incontestable reality to them, the same évidence. Like the monuments, streets and fields elsewhere in the film, they are there. Behind these figures – as much as the Zionist movement may try to deny it, and as much as anybody expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause may be harassed, politically ostracised and baselessly slandered as antisemitic – lies the trauma suffered by an entire people.

A Conversation with Jean-Charles Fitoussi

Oscar Pedersen, 2023
CONVERSATION
25.10.2023
EN

From the time you are born, your eyes are open, and you see everything for the first time. The older you get, the less you are surprised by things. But things have not changed, it is just you who have changed, things can still be very surprising. It is such a pity that we are losing the perception of how surprising things are. I believe that in Huillet and Straub’s films, you are given back the feeling of a surprising world. To see the things that are in front of you becomes completely incredible.

Rastko Novakovic, 2023
ARTICLE
04.10.2023
EN

Straub, who devoted his life to the voicing of German, French, Italian, and English words (and their relationship to place), must be a fellow traveller. One cannot induce divine or communist photosynthesis, but one can put words into motion. Modestly and with maximum attention, this is what Passerone and Straub do with these verses. For a few minutes they dwell on the supreme moment of illumination, asking us to match the concentration of the poet and of the speaker.

(July 30, 1941 - May 19, 2022)

Daniel Fairfax, 2022
ARTICLE
27.07.2022
NL EN

Critic, film theorist and filmmaker, Jean-Louis Comolli died in his adoptive home city of Paris on May 19, 2022, at the age of eighty. An editor of Cahiers du Cinéma from 1965 to 1973, his international reputation in the field of film studies rests largely on a handful of texts – ‘The Detour through the Direct’, ‘Cinema/Ideology/Criticism’, ‘Technique and Ideology’ – written as he and his co-editor Jean Narboni steered the journal towards a Marxist-Leninist line in the wake of the May ’68 uprising. In France, meanwhile, he is equally well-known for the corpus of films made after departing Cahiers: a body of more than forty titles incorporating both fiction and (more preponderantly) documentary formats, and made for both cinema and television.

Daniel Fairfax, 2022
ARTICLE
27.07.2022
NL EN

Criticus, filmtheoreticus en filmmaker Jean-Louis Comolli overleed op 19 mei 2022 op tachtigjarige leeftijd in zijn woonplaats Parijs. Van 1965 tot 1973 was hij redacteur van Cahiers du Cinéma en zijn internationale reputatie binnen de filmstudies berust voornamelijk op een handvol teksten – “Détour par le direct”, “Cinéma/idéologie/critique”, “Technique et idéologie” – die hij schreef toen hij en mederedacteur Jean Narboni het tijdschrift in de nasleep van mei ’68 in marxistisch-leninistische richting stuurden. In Frankrijk staat hij intussen ook bekend om het corpus films dat hij na zijn vertrek bij de Cahiers maakte: meer dan veertig titels met zowel fictiefilms als (in overwegende mate) documentaires, gemaakt voor zowel cinema als televisie.

Straschek 1963 - 74 West Berlin (Filmkritik 212, August 1974)

Julian Volz, 2022
ARTICLE
02.03.2022
NL EN DE

At the end of the 1960s, there was a change of generations at the magazine [Filmkritik] and the editorial work was henceforth led by a collective, the film critics’ co-operative. From that moment, the magazine stopped being a film magazine oriented towards current cinema events and, instead, published thematic issues devoted entirely to one subject and without any formal guidelines. The issues’ respective guest authors and designers were free from editorial intervention. Only these conditions made it possible for literary and film personalities such as Straschek to cover an entire issue with a thoroughly composed biographical essay.

Een ingang tot de cinema en het denken van Fernand Deligny

Johanna Cockx, 2022
ARTICLE
19.01.2022
NL

Deze film [Le moindre geste] – weerbarstig toevalsdocument, ruwe parel – lijkt te ontglippen aan elke poging tot categorisering. Hetzelfde zou je kunnen zeggen van de initiatiefnemer, Fernand Deligny (1913-1996). Deze Franse pedagoog, die een leven lang werkte met delinquente, psychisch kwetsbare en mentaal beperkte kinderen en jongeren, valt evengoed schrijver, poëet, filosoof, cineast, … te noemen. Zijn nalatenschap bevat allerlei artefacten: essays, verhalen, scenario’s, toneelstukken, sprookjes, brieven en cartografische tekeningen. Le moindre geste is de eerste van vier films die hij realiseerde in nauwe samenwerking met een wisselende entourage van medewerkers. 

Over Straub-Huillets poëtica van het hylomorfisme

Bojana Cvejić, 2019
ARTICLE
24.07.2019
NL EN

Wat zo kenmerkend is aan Straub-Huillets cinema als materie-vormverbinding is dat het politieke cinema is – niet als een genre, maar in de specifieke manier van begrijpen verbonden aan Straub-Huillets opvatting en manier van werken van cinema. “Er is geen politieke cinema zonder moraal, er is geen politieke cinema zonder theologie, er is geen politieke cinema zonder mystiek.”

On Straub-Huillet’s Poetics of Hylomorphism

Bojana Cvejić, 2019
ARTICLE
24.07.2019
NL EN

What is distinctive about Straub-Huillet’s film as a matter-form compound is that it is a political film – not as a genre, but in a peculiar understanding that amounts to Straub-Huillet’s conception and operation of cinema. “There is no political film without morality, there is no political film without theology, there is no political film without mysticism.”

Part 4

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
01.06.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

The title of the text “Straschek 1963–74 West Berlin” is as simple as it is informative: it is a subjective, self-reflective insight into Günter Peter Straschek’s eleven years in West Berlin. Straschek: “Making movies is, for me, just one means of expressing myself. The idea of blustering my way around this trade to the end of my days (in line with the TV­formula: regular staff editor marries secretary while secretly supporting film editor girlfriend) scares me. If, for example, I really stood no chance of making films for TV, I would move to another country or work in an institute or publish a book or go off somewhere for a couple of years and do manual work or take a civil service job. I’d like to live in as unalienated a way as possible; things are awful enough as they are.”

Deel 4

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
01.06.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

De titel van de tekst “Straschek 1963 – 74 West-Berlijn”, die hier voor het eerst in een Nederlandse vertaling verschijnt, is even eenvoudig als informatief: het is een subjectieve, zelfreflexieve inkijk in Günter Peter Strascheks elf jaar in West-Berlijn. Straschek: “Filmmaken is voor mij gewoon een manier van uitdrukken. Het idee een leven lang in dit vak rond te hangen (volgens de tv-formule: redacteur in loondienst trouwt met secretaresse en heeft monteuse als geheime vriendin) boezemt mij wel angst in. Mocht ik bijvoorbeeld bij de televisie geen productiekansen zien, dan zou ik naar een ander land gaan of in een instituut werken of een boek uitgeven of mij ergens een paar jaar terugtrekken en lichamelijk werk doen of een functie aannemen. Ik wil zo onvervreemd mogelijk leven, het is al klote genoeg.”

Teil 4

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
01.06.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

Elf ereignisreiche Jahre in Westberlin hinterließen deutliche Spuren im Leben von Günter Peter Straschek. Er verarbeitet sie in dem Text “Straschek 1963 -74 Westberlin”. Der Titel in der dritten Person verweist auf den selbstreflexiven Charakter des Essays. Straschek: “Filmemachen ist mir nur eine Artikulationsmöglichkeit. Die Vorstellung, ein ganzes Leben in diesem Metier herumzuschlawinern (nach der Fernsehformel: festangestellter Redakteur heiratet Sekretärin und unterhält Cutterin als heimliche Freundin), erschreckt mich doch. Sollte ich beispielsweise beim TV ohne jegliche Realisationschancen sein, würde ich in ein anderes Land gehen oder in einem Institut arbeiten oder ein Buch veröffentlichen oder mich für ein paar Jahre irgendwohin zurückziehen und körperliche Arbeit leisten oder eine Funktionärstätigkeit übernehmen. Ich möchte so wenig wie möglich entfremdet leben, es ist immer noch beschissen genug.”

Part 3

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
04.05.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

The title of the text “Straschek 1963–74 West Berlin” is as simple as it is informative: it is a subjective, self-reflective insight into Günter Peter Straschek’s eleven years in West Berlin. Straschek: “I’ve never enjoyed teaching or gained anything from it, least of all in a state college of fine arts, those state-run breeding grounds for irrationality, where teachers and students are out to do each other one better at cooking up pretentious ideas.”

Deel 3

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
04.05.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

De titel van de tekst “Straschek 1963 – 74 West-Berlijn”, die hier voor het eerst in een Nederlandse vertaling verschijnt, is even eenvoudig als informatief: het is een subjectieve, zelfreflexieve inkijk in Günter Peter Strascheks elf jaar in West-Berlijn. Straschek: “Ik heb lesgeven nooit leuk gevonden, ik heb er nooit veel aan gehad. Zeker niet op een hogeschool voor beeldende kunsten, die door de staat gerunde broeinesten van irrationaliteit waar docenten en studenten elkaar met hun pretentieuze ideeën de loef proberen af te steken.”

Teil 3

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
04.05.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

Elf ereignisreiche Jahre in Westberlin hinterließen deutliche Spuren im Leben von Günter Peter Straschek. Er verarbeitet sie in dem Text “Straschek 1963 -74 Westberlin”. Der Titel in der dritten Person verweist auf den selbstreflexiven Charakter des Essays. Straschek: “Unterrichten hat mir nie Spass gemacht, mir nie etwas gegeben. Am wenigsten an einer Staatlichen Hochschule für Bildende Künste, diesen staatlichen Brutstatten der Irrationalität, wo Lehrer und Schüler sich an verschmockten Ideen zu übertreffen versuchen.”

Deel 2

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
13.04.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

De titel van de tekst “Straschek 1963 – 74 West-Berlijn”, die hier voor het eerst in een Nederlandse vertaling verschijnt, is even eenvoudig als informatief: het is een subjectieve, zelfreflexieve inkijk in Günter Peter Strascheks elf jaar in West-Berlijn. Straschek: “In de herfst van ’63 was ik vastbesloten om naar de DDR te verhuizen. In een fabriek wilde ik werken. Meer zelfs, ik vond dat ik mijn bestaan fundamenteel moest veranderen. In Berlijn (DDR) stuurden ze me echter dagenlang van het ene ministerie naar het andere en weigerden ze beleefd. Een kritiek rondbazuinende, werkloze Oostenrijker kon deze eerste Duitse arbeiders- en boerenstaat niet gebruiken. Daar zal ik hen eeuwig dankbaar voor zijn.”

Teil 2

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
13.04.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

Elf ereignisreiche Jahre in Westberlin hinterließen deutliche Spuren im Leben von Günter Peter Straschek. Er verarbeitet sie in dem Text “Straschek 1963 -74 Westberlin”. Der Titel in der dritten Person verweist auf den selbstreflexiven Charakter des Essays. Straschek: “Im Herbst ’63 war ich entschlossen, in die DDR zu übersiedeln. In einer Fabrik wollte ich arbeiten, mehr noch: ich meinte mein Dasein grundsätzlich verändern zu müssen. Doch in Berlin (DDR) schickte man mich tagelang von einem Ministerium zum anderen, lehnte höflich ab. Einen herumkritisierenden berufslosen Österreicher konnte dieser erste deutsche Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat nicht gebrauchen. Dafür will ich ihm ewig dankbar sein.”

Part 2

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
13.04.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

The title of the text “Straschek 1963–74 West Berlin” is as simple as it is informative: it is a subjective, self-reflective insight into Günter Peter Straschek’s eleven years in West Berlin. Straschek: “In fall 1963, I was determined to settle in the German Democratic Republic. I wanted to work in a factory. More: I was convinced that I had radically to alter my existence. In East Berlin, however, I was sent from one ministry to the other for days on end, and my request was politely declined. The first German workers’ and peasants’ state had no use for an Austrian without a profession who went around criticizing everything. I will be forever grateful to it for that.”

x

Part 1

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
02.03.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

The title of the text “Straschek 1963–74 West Berlin” is as simple as it is informative: it is a subjective, self-reflective insight into Günter Peter Straschek’s eleven years in West Berlin. Straschek: “The discrepancy between subjective pleasure and objective cognition troubles me less where movies are involved than anywhere else. I never have been able to understand the constructions and contortions of certain, usually “conscious,” movie fans who go to great lengths to transcend impressions based on their own likes and dislikes by means of quasi-objective judgments. I, in contrast, don’t find it embarrassing to exploit precisely this subjective freedom. Everyone has (in cinema too) his or her favourite tearjerker.”

Teil 1

Günter Peter Straschek, 1974
ARTICLE
02.03.2022
NL EN DE
1 2 3 4

Elf ereignisreiche Jahre in Westberlin hinterließen deutliche Spuren im Leben von Günter Peter Straschek. Er verarbeitet sie in dem Text “Straschek 1963 -74 Westberlin”. Der Titel in der dritten Person verweist auf den selbstreflexiven Charakter des Essays. Straschek: “Die Diskrepanz zwischen subjektivem Gefallen und objektiver Erkenntnis würde mich überall mehr als beim Movie beunruhigen. Nie konnte ich die Konstruktionen und Purzelbäumer einzelner, meist “bewusster” Kinofans verstehen, angestrengt Ihren persönlichen Geschmackseindruck durch ein quasiobjektiviertes Urteil zu transzendieren. Ich hingegen geniere mich nicht im Ausnützen gerade dieses subjektivierten Freiraums - es hat doch jeder (auch im Kino) seine Heuler.”

Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, 1969, 1984
CORRESPONDENCE
25.10.2023
EN

All we can do is try to do our job as well as we can – but that too is so stupid, to have to fight for a film not to be ruined, considering how many other (more important?) things – people – we ought to be fighting for. And yet you must fight for a film “pour ne pas céder”. Godard claims that you don’t last long on your own, but maybe that’s all you can do: hold out as long as you can…

Nicole Brenez, 2008
ARTICLE
15.12.2021
EN

Harun Farocki, in all his works, elaborates and un folds an intensive and meditated form of encounter that we have named “visual study”. What is visual study? It is a matter of a frontal encounter, a face-to-face encounter between an existing image and a figurative project dedicated to observing It – in other words, a study of the image by means of the image itself.

Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, 1969, 1984
CORRESPONDENCE
25.10.2023
EN

All we can do is try to do our job as well as we can – but that too is so stupid, to have to fight for a film not to be ruined, considering how many other (more important?) things – people – we ought to be fighting for. And yet you must fight for a film “pour ne pas céder”. Godard claims that you don’t last long on your own, but maybe that’s all you can do: hold out as long as you can…

“For It Is the Critical Faculty That Invents Fresh Forms” (Oscar Wilde)

Nicole Brenez, 2004
ARTICLE
15.12.2021
EN

With a few remarkable exceptions (Jean Mitry, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Noel Burch ...), the history of cinema has mainly been recounted from the industry’s point of view. May this contribution to a history of forms help us to escape such a dominant ideology and reconsider the works and the artists from a different perspective. Today the violence of the cultural industry is so cynically triumphant that it is possible to establish a law of inverse proportions between the social visibility of a film and its real eminence. 

Ruben Desiere, 2014
CONVERSATION
23.06.2021
NL EN

The Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa made his first film, Blood, in 1989. In 1994, Down to Earth followed, which was filmed in Cape Verde. Costa came back from the island with a number of parcels and letters from Cape Verdeans he had met there, addressed to their relatives and friends who had emigrated to Portugal. His task as a postman brought him to Lisbon’s Fontainhas neighbourhood, where many migrants were living at the time. After this first contact with the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, Costa kept returning there, filming Ossos in 1997, the first instalment in a series of films he would make with the inhabitants of Fontainhas. Pedro Costa: “Fontainhas is, indeed, the product of something, of the factories here, of people moving from some northern Scottish village to Sheffield. That is what it’s about.”

Ruben Desiere, 2014
CONVERSATION
23.06.2021
NL EN

De Portugese filmmaker Pedro Costa maakte zijn eerste film Blood in 1989. In 1994 volgde het in Kaapverdië gefilmde Down to Earth. Costa kwam terug van het eiland met pakjes en brieven van Kaapverdianen voor hun familieleden en vrienden die naar Portugal waren geëmigreerd. Zijn taak als postbode bracht hem naar de wijk Fontainhas in Lissabon, waar veel migranten woonden. Na het eerste contact met de bewoners van de wijk ging Costa verschillende keren terug en in 1997 filmde hij er Ossos, de eerste van een reeks films met de bewoners van Fontainhas. Pedro Costa: “Fontainhas is inderdaad het gevolg van iets, van de fabrieken hier, van mensen die van een of ander Noord-Schots dorp naar Sheffield verhuisden. Daar gaat het over.”