Bent or Broken

B-52

A detailed, historical documentary about the construction and capabilities of the United States military's B-52 bomber.

Something Self Explanatory (15x)

An educational film about an aspect of political economy. The concepts of use value, barter value and labor as a commodity are the subjects; they are intended to introduce the process of understanding the theory of value of work and the law of values, alienation and fetish.

3000 Houses

“Six young people move through a city in order to establish the starting point of their joint action. But they can’t agree on the topic. In the end everybody goes their own way and leaves the city.” - Hartmut Bitomsky

Deutschlandbilder

This compilation film focuses on the contents of Nazi propaganda shorts such as "The Beauty of Work" (1934), "We Have No Problems" (1933), or "The Will To Live" (1944) that preceded the feature films in German movie theaters between 1933 and 1945. The shorts reveal that men and women workers were idealized, uniformity was stressed, optimism in the face of adversity was the goal, and, in general, all the classic lies that dictatorships use to control and mold their citizens are featured.

Die UFA

Die UFA, a film essay about the eponymous German studio.

Es stirbt allerdings ein jeder, fragt sich nur wie und wie Du gelebt hast (Holger Meins)

A look into the life of Holger Meins, the German cinematography student who became a revolutionary and a prominent voice in the Vietnam War protest movement. This film is comprised of interviews with his associates.

Before Your Eyes - Vietnam

An unconventional essay film that interrogates the visual and ideological legacy of the Vietnam War. Blending staged scenes, archival footage, photographs, and philosophical dialogue, the film follows various characters — including an American soldier captured by North Vietnamese villagers — as they reflect on violence, memory, and image-making. Set partly in West Berlin and partly in reconstructed spaces representing Vietnam, the film avoids traditional dramatic narrative in favor of a fragmented montage of voices, documents, and reenactments. Interweaving love stories, political debate, and historical commentary, Farocki creates a critical reflection on how war is represented, seen, and imagined, both in cinema and in public consciousness. The result is a complex meditation on images as weapons and instruments of perception.

Closed Circuit

IT specialist Victor Faber makes a living securing computers for large corporations and banks. His reclusive private life is upended when he falls in love with a strange woman named Juliet. Her friend convinces Faber to exploit his knowledge to rob a bank.

Reichsautobahn

While working on "Deutschlandbilder" (1983), Hartmut Bitomsky was examining film material produced by the Nazi regime when he came across an abundance of footage documenting the planning and construction of motorways. In this found footage documentary he investigates what this material actually says: the motorway is stylized within it as a promise of progress and modernity, a "lifeline of the nation", less a straightforward piece of infrastructure than a prestige object, a work of art.

Playback

The film documents a debate about early 20th century films, mainly 1910 to 1920, from short news reels to excerpts from full-length movies. At Amsterdam's Film Museum, film directors, students, and film researchers and archivists look at the moving images and discuss their meaning, in the social and technical contexts. Moody live music was added to the edited film.

The VW Complex

It takes a day and a half to assemble a VW Golf 2. Hartmut Bitmosky traces a car’s journey through the fully automated production lines in Wolfsburg and explores the development of the VW Group using archival footage. Moving almost in time with the machines, the director constructs a documentary collage—a visual exploration of the corporate giant, which appears as dehumanized and automated as its production process.

Barrage and Bunker

Barrage and Bunker is an essay film about the (narrative) space imagined by fiction films. Reflections and associations about movement in space are the basis of every kind of story-telling. The film is sometimes referred to as part of Bitomsky's Cinema Trilogy. Sequences from over 20 movies are quoted and commented on by a team of three "researchers" (Bitomsky, Petzold, Tanner) in a sort of laboratory. TV-monitors, production stills and screenshots are used as well as quotations from books. A long night's work.

Cinema and Death

“Why does cinema need death, when it can’t show it?” The filmmaker’s monologue and the discourse of images meet

Es geht um Alles

Dust

A look at the pervasive power of dust from its tiny particles settling in unseen places to its ability to cause illnesses and create the cosmos.

Workers Leaving the Factory

Using one of the Lumière Brothers' first films of workers leaving the Factory as his starting point, Farocki provides an insight to changes in industrial production, workers' strikes and motion pictures-- via images of workers leaving factories throughout the years.