Filmbooks

Seated at a table, surrounded by stacks of books, Harun Farocki addresses the viewer: he’d like to talk about books on film. A monitor behind him shows the books from above as he leafs through the pages. He talks about the print quality of the images, the interplay between image and text, and the difference between a film still, taken directly from the film, and a set photograph, in which a scene is recreated as precisely as possible by a photographer.

Farocki explains in detail the common practice of adjusting the aspect ratio of film stills to fit neatly on the page. He shows how the choice of how to crop the image almost always shifts the focus to the speaking actor, eliminating an entire dimension of cinematography: the composition, the framing. In its simple setup, reviewing a small stack of film books, this short film is typical of Farocki: a methodical analysis of how images are produced and reproduced, constructed and consumed.