Workers Leaving the Factory
Film, 36 min, 1995
Workers Leaving the Factory – such was the title of the first cinema film ever shown in public. For 45 seconds, this still existing sequence depicts workers at the photographic products factory in Lyon owned by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière hurrying, closely packed, out of the shadows of the factory gates and into the afternoon sun. But where are they going? This question have preoccupied generations of documentary filmmakers. For the space before the factory gates has always been the scene of social conflicts. This 45s sequence has become an icon of the narrative medium in the history of the cinema. Harun Farocki explores this scene through the history of film. The result is a fascinating cinematographic analysis in the medium of cinematography itself, ranging in scopefrom Chaplin’s Modern Times to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accattone!. Farocki’s film shows that the Lumière brothers’ sequence already carries within itself the germ of a foreseeable social development: the eventual disappearance of this form of industrial labour.
Artist's Bio:
Born in German-annexed Czechoslovakia in 1944. Studied at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (West). 1974-1984 author and editor of the journal Filmkritik in Munich. 1993-1999 visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1966 over 100 productions for television or the cinema: children’s television, documentary films, film essays, story films. Since 1996 numerous group and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries. 2007 at Documenta 12 with Deep Play. Since 2004 guest professor, from 2006 to 2011 full professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.