[spectre] huillet and straub

[Florian Schneider]

OF A PEOPLE WHO ARE MISSING
On films by Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub

Ciné-club and exhibition
12 November - 20 December 2009
Extra City - Kunsthal Antwerpen

http://ofapeoplewhoaremissing.net


The "Straubs", as Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub are often
called, are among the most outstanding, and yet widely unknown
contemporary filmmakers in the history of cinema. Jean-Marie Straub and
Danièle Huillet worked together for over 40 years until Danièle
Huillet's death in October 2006. Since the early 1960s their radical
approach towards filmmaking allowed them to create almost 30 very
diverse films; they treated and transformed literature by Kafka, Pavese
and Hölderlin, as well as the paintings of Cézanne, cantatas by Bach and
operas by Schönberg.

The filmmakers constantly questioned the possible transformation from
one medium to an other, such as literature, painting and music into
film, as a process of re-reading, re-inventing or readjusting of
meaning. If there is such a thing as a "Pédagogie straubienne" (as Serge
Daney once hinted), the project  follows the question: what can be
learned from their films today? Is it possible to translate their
precision which seems so deeply connected to and conditioned by the
means  of analog film production, into what is usually conceived as the
age of digital image production, and if so, under what terms?

Huillet and Straub categorically refused to offer any kind of
interpretation that might ease or facilitate access to the artwork or
so-called original. Instead, their focus on the act of speaking, always
in very specific circumstances, opens up a multitude of possible
interpretations; this marks precisely the peculiarity of their films.
Through the speech-act the moving images change one of their most
essential properties and they become no-one's property.

No-one's property is the opposite of what pretends to belong to
everybody -- no matter whether it is communicated, participated in or
otherwise shared. In this sense one can also understand the remarks that
Gilles Deleuze repeatedly put forth in his books on cinema: the films of
the "Straubs" are made for a people who are missing. "A people" needs to
be invoked rather than represented or addressed. "The people no longer
exist, or not yet...".

The phrase "a people who are missing" is taken from the only public
lecture Paul Klee held in 1924 in the Kunstverein Jena: "Uns traegt kein
Volk." Instead of embellishing the splendid isolation of the artist,
such a people who are missing need to be understood literally and
Jean-Marie Straub once suggested dedicating his movie "The chronicle of
Anna Magdalena Bach" to the Vietcong.

OF A PEOPLE WHO ARE MISSING will open in Extra City from November 12 to
December 20 as a platform for both the viewing and making of films. The
exhibition space will be structured around five studios which will act
as showrooms as well as independent production spaces. Each studio is to
be used in a different configuration of archive material, film excerpts,
actual footage and the critical discourse around it. Every Thursday to
Saturday, one studio will host invited guests and contributors for a
series of screenings, lectures and debates.

Among the contributors are: Chantal Akerman, Pietro Bianchi, Manon de
Boer, Robert Bramkamp, Vanessa Brito, Giulio Bursi, Rinaldo Censi, Anna
Fiacciarini, Jack Henrie Fisher, Peter Friedl, Kim de Groot, Romano
Guelfi, Armin Linke, Laura Malacart, Martha Rosler, Sally Shafto, Ines
Schaber,  Eyal Sivan, Benoît Turquety, Barbara Ulrich, Klaus Volkmer,
Susanne Weirich.

Curated by: Annett Busch and Florian Schneider

Detailed program at:
http://ofapeoplewhoaremissing.net
http://extracity.org

Of A People Who Are Missing is a collaboration of Extra City – Kunsthal
Antwerpen and Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. With the support of
Multitude e.V., Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg and Time Festival, Ghent.