JEAN-MARIE STRAUB UND DANIèLE HUILLET BEI DER ARBEIT AN EINEM FILM NACH FRANZ KAFKAS ROMANFRAGMENT

Danièle Huillet
BRD 1983
26 min
V'04

There is no text you can simply recite with its soul, there just isn’t any. Everything has to pass the body and the text itself doesn’t have a soul unless it has a spine and a certain structure; it only has a soul when it is well-constructed. There are films with a lot of dialogue and where it doesn’t make a difference whether I sit inside the theatre or outside on the porch, I just don’t hear a single word. Films like these are recited with heart and soul, mostly they’re Italian, or Fassbinder. And then what happens to Kluge when he sees Nicht versöhnt happens to me: I get the impression that people live completely outside language. This means, they are already dead, they’re ghosts. Both those who made the film and those who talk. Because everything slides away, like shit on a plastic foil.

Credits
Harun Farocki Filmproduktion