Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub: “The greatness of the film, that is the modesty that one is condemned to photography”

Reading with a film program

The films by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub – made in Germany, Italy and France – are key works of contemporary cinema that have stimulated passionate critical thinking and writing. Their work is characterized by the underlying notion that the reality recorded by the camera and sound recording device should be understood as a “reality block”, as an immovable unit of sound and image as well as space and time. Two new books have been published and give an insight into a diverse body of work in which aesthetics and politics are closely interwoven. On the one hand, »Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub: Schriften« (texts for the documentary XXII, Vorwerk 8, Berlin 2020), which for the first time brings together all the texts in German that Huillet and Straub have written for a publication. On the other hand, »Tell It to the Stones. Encounters with the Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub «(Sternberg Press, London 2021), a compilation volume with contributions by authors, artists and theorists, was created as a result of an event lasting several months at the Berlin Academy of the Arts which, in addition to a complete retrospective of the cinematic work, also included lectures, discussions, concerts and an exhibition. Authors and editors read passages of texts from both books, referring to selected films from six decades.

Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s music accompanying a film scene

Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, BRD 1972, 15 min, OmeU

En rachâchant 

Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, F 1982, 7 min, OmeU

L’arrotino (Le rémouleur)

Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, I/F 2001, 7 min, OmeU

La Guerre d’Algérie!

Jean-Marie Straub, CH/F 2014, 2 min, OmeU

La France contre les robots

Jean-Marie Straub, CH 2020, 2 x 5 min, OmeU