Tor 2

Observational documentary about the Merce Cunningham Dance Company rehearsing throughout the summer of 1967 in New York.

HARLEM, USA: in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s murder, German filmmaker Klaus Wildenhahn turned his 16mm camera on the New Lafayette Theatre as its players rehearsed scenes, ran public workshops and conducted exercises in uptown Manhattan. New Lafayette (or NLT) had been founded by actor-director Robert Macbeth the previous year, with the aim of producing theater for black people, by black people, to reflect the experiences and vernacular of the Harlem community. Within the Black Arts Movement, NLT would become a significant institution: it published the journal Black Theatre, and employed a host of talents – including the Black Panthers’ Minister of Culture, Ed Bullins, and the great pianist Junior Mance, both of whom appear in Wildenhahn’s film as resident collaborators.

Experimental composer John Cage tours Europe with The Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1966.

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.

In her former life, Johanna K. worked as a civil engineer – Mr Kamermans – in Holland, building dykes and roads. Then she discovered her love of beautiful clothes and cabaret, and found her calling as a dancer. Pleasantly, calmly, and with admirable thoughtfulness, she recounts various stages of her eventful life between St. Pauli and Ibiza, between her own gender identity and social constraints and expectations.

The two-part documentary introduced people in the villages and less populated areas of the Federal Republic. The prevailing structures, worries, hardships and hopes were shown - a portrait of the 1970s.