In Between two wars, Harun Farocki attempts to interlock the logic of war with the logic of production as determining dynamics of the years 1918-1933, the period between the two "world wars". By way of didactical acting, voice-over reflections and by applying a associating and analytical montage the film develops its thesis, that in the early 1920's the "necessities" of capitalistic production have become more and more ignorant of the actual needs of the people. Rationalization and the forming of trusts finally lead to a point where the capitalist production machine directly transformed into a warfare and destruction machine. Farocki's film is relevant for the discussion of "The Lost Moment", both in terms of its narrative and in formal and aesthetic terms. Farocki tries to reconstruct the enabling conditions of a historical period, which was to manifest itself as an ultimate catastrophe and which was often not understood or straightforwardly mystified. While the political and economical decision makers are trying to perfect their use of the capitalist machinery, the workers are confronted with the question how come they always and at any rate serve this machine as canon fodder. The narrator Farocki explains in the film that he had intended to tell the story at the original historic sites, but that these were mostly destroyed and had vanished. The war, which was produced there, had swept them away. Instead the artist Farocki, who in one scene we see at his money job as a picture editor for a print publication, abstracts from the call for "authenticity" and thus clears the table for an argumentative editing of the images. One could say that the film re-interprets the distance to the lost historical moment and turns it into a freedom of thought. Instead of searching the archives, Farocki searches the historical consciousness. This way, the film – even in its primness - also bears testimony of its time and the way in which certain films were made in Germany then. In Between two wars, Harun Farocki attempts to interlock the logic of war with the logic of production as determining dynamics of the years 1918-1933, the period between the two "world wars". By way of didactical acting, voice-over reflections and by applying a associating and analytical montage the film develops its thesis, that in the early 1920's the "necessities" of capitalistic production have become more and more ignorant of the actual needs of the people. Rationalization and the forming of trusts finally lead to a point where the capitalist production machine directly transformed into a warfare and destruction machine. Farocki's film is relevant for the discussion of "The Lost Moment", both in terms of its narrative and in formal and aesthetic terms. Farocki tries to reconstruct the enabling conditions of a historical period, which was to manifest itself as an ultimate catastrophe and which was often not understood or straightforwardly mystified. While the political and economical decision makers are trying to perfect their use of the capitalist machinery, the workers are confronted with the question how come they always and at any rate serve this machine as canon fodder. The narrator Farocki explains in the film that he had intended to tell the story at the original historic sites, but that these were mostly destroyed and had vanished. The war, which was produced there, had swept them away. Instead the artist Farocki, who in one scene we see at his money job as a picture editor for a print publication, abstracts from the call for "authenticity" and thus clears the table for an argumentative editing of the images. One could say that the film re-interprets the distance to the lost historical moment and turns it into a freedom of thought. Instead of searching the archives, Farocki searches the historical consciousness. This way, the film – even in its primness - also bears testimony of its time and the way in which certain films were made in Germany then. The meeting point for the film screenings is always at 9 pm in the exhibition space on the 2nd floor of GfKFB, Kunstfabrik, Am Flutgraben 3. The film screening will then probably take place in a former sales and presentation building in the immediate vicinity. The incomplete emptiness of this room conveys an impression of the parasite use which a globalized economy makes of space and how the appearance of urban space becomes subject to the strategic decisions of a company. Florian Wüst, as a film curator, is interested in political filmmaking in Germany and specifically in the ways in which films deal with the peculiar identity of a "Post-War" society. I see interesting parallels to Farocki's work in the 70's (of which Between two wars is a good example) in Florian Wüst's own artistic production – also in "Belated Advocacy", which deals with the ideology of production in post-war "Wirtschaftswunder" Germany. Especially the use of historical documents, the interest for the linguistic forms of quotation and statement, the use of abstraction and re-enactment and also the self-confident positioning in the distance to the historic moment suggest interesting connections between both oeuvres. Florian Wüst, as a film curator, is interested in political filmmaking in Germany and specifically in the ways in which films deal with the peculiar identity of a "Post-War" society. I see interesting parallels to Farocki's work in the 70's (of which Between two wars is a good example) in Florian Wüst's own artistic production – also in "Belated Advocacy", which deals with the ideology of production in post-war "Wirtschaftswunder" Germany. Especially the use of historical documents, the interest for the linguistic forms of quotation and statement, the use of abstraction and re-enactment and also the self-confident positioning in the distance to the historic moment suggest interesting connections between both oeuvres.
