Workers Leaving The Factory 1995 All Ages
When
1.00 pm, Sat 6 Jan 2018 (36 mins)Where
Gallery of Modern Art & Cinema A
About
Screens with Of Time and the City 2008.
'Workers Leaving the Factory was the title of the first cinema film ever shown in public. For 45 seconds, this still-existent sequence depicts workers at the photographic products factory in Lyon, owned by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière, hurrying out of the factory gates and into the afternoon sun. But where are they going? To a meeting? To the barricades? Or simply home? These questions have preoccupied generations of documentary filmmakers. In his documentary essay, Harun Farocki explores this scene through the history of cinema. The result is a fascinating cinematographic analysis in the medium of cinematography itself, ranging in scope from 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.' Klaus Gronenborn
Production Credits
- Director: Harun Farocki
- Courtesy: Video Data Bank
- Year: 1995
- Runtime: 36 minutes
- Country: Germany
- Language: English
- Sound: Stereo
- Colour: Colour, Black & White
- Screening Format: SD Video