dear all!

you are receiving the first newsletter "of a people who are missing"
http://ofapeoplewhoaremissing.net

we are going to send out this newsletter once a week until the end of this year. it will contain program updates and additional informations regarding the five studios that will open with a brief introduction and a screening of "The chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach" tonight at Extra City.

below you find the latest version of the program for the next five weeks.

we are looking foreard very much to see you soon!

annett busch
florian schneider

STUDIO 1: TOO SOON, TOO LATE

The image only exists on the screen if it is a thought: an idea that is
made concrete. But having an idea in cinema appears first of all as an
act of resistance against the very possibilities of cinema. Too soon or
too late it may become clear that this is exactly what cinema is about:
to make an alignment or to unalign; in any case one has to take a
position, since it always matters where the camera is; to frame an image
without making a frame around it, and to glue these images together. The
purpose of the frame is to transport time; to carry it across specific
places, in order to understand what is missing. One is expecting it, it
both comes and does not come, it is always brought forward and delayed.

20 November 2009 18:00

Annett Busch and Florian Schneider: Property relations

Opening of the studios with an presentation of the project, its
backgrounds and goals.

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20 November 2009 20:00

Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, Germany/Italy 1967, 94 min. DVD
screening, German with English subtitles

"Chronicle" was Straub's first project. Personal aspects of the life of
Johann Sebastian Bach are presented, along with the musical performance,
through the agency of a diary written by his wife.

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21 November 2009 16:00

Too soon / too late

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, France/Egypt 1981, 105 min, 16mm
16mm projection, English version

The film is a diptych. One, France. Two, Egypt. No actors, not even
characters, especially not extras. If there is an actor, it's the
landscape.

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21 November 2009 18:00

Benoît Turquety: Objectified Vision - Landscape, History, Poetry, Film

The question could be: when we are looking at a landscape, what do we
see of its history?

STUDIO 2: MOUNTAINS ON FIRE

"Look at Sainte-Victoire there. These blocks were made of fire and
there’s still fire in them." Huillet and Straub's admiration for Cezanne
led to two films that are about the challenge of learning how to see:
how to see better, how to really see. The result of these lessons is the
experience of a purity that is shocking. Shocking only because one
realizes all of a sudden that it is not too much, but exactly as it
should be. Beauty appears as a demystification and the dismantling of
fear through repetition; as a series of identifications and unexpected
encounters that at first sight may look rather odd but then turn out
honest and true; as the production of continuity by an assemblage of
heterogeneous elements which have nothing in common. Or, again in the
words of Cezanne: "Let them set the Louvre on fire if they’re afraid of
what is beautiful!"

26 November 2009 18:00

Proposta in quattro parti (Proposal in four parts)

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 1985, Italy, 45 min., Betacam SP

"Blut und Boden". A video-montage out of 40 minutes film-cutouts in four
compositions.

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26 November 2009 20:00

Rinaldo Censi: "All seems to flicker"

Notes on Straub-Huillet's Cézanne. By Rinaldo Censi, a film critic and
curator from Bologna. He teaches at the Pavia University.

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27 November 2009 18:00

Une visite au Louvre (A Trip to the Louvre)

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 2004, France/Germany, 47 min., 35mm
35mm projection, French Version

As the camera shows some of the masterpieces held in the Louvre, Julie
Kotaï speaks the comments made about the paintings by Cézanne which were
put into writing by the poet Joachim Gasquet.

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27 November 2009 19:00

Paul Cezanne

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, France/Germany 1989, 63 min DVD
screening, French Version

Imaginary conversation with Cézanne quoted from a critique by Joachim
Gasquet.

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27 November 2009 20:00

Sally Shafto: Artistic encounters

Investigation into Cézanne (1989), the filmmakers’ first filmic
encounter with the painter. Sally Shafto is an independent film scholar.
In her work she explores film in relation to the other visual arts.

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28 November 2009 14:00

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Chantal Akerman, Belgium/France 1975 DVD screening, French with English
subtitles

A single mother's regimented schedule. A mesmerizing study of stasis and
containment, time and domestic anxiety.

28 November 2009 17:00

Anselm Franke in conversation with Chantal Akerman.

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28 November 2009 20:00

Antigone

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, Germany/France 1992, 90 min. 35mm
projection, German Version with French subtitels

Hölderin's version of Sophocles' "Antigone" was adapted for the stage by
Berthold Brecht and filmed by the Straubs in the antique theater of
Segesta, Sicily.

STUDIO 3: THE HOMELESS ARCHIVE

The making of films leaves and provokes traces of the making. Material
to feed the machinery of public relations, interviews, articles, set
photography, mediating films, noise, but also hotel bills,
correspondence, laboratory results, screenplays and its different
versions – every element tells another story of filmmaking than the
films itself, a story of working. It was more likely the work of Danièle
Huillet who loosely stored lots of these materials in boxes, material
that became auratic over the years – but things were also handed out as
gifts, as payment for a job well done and they became working material
in their turn. Many of these traces are floating around. In order to
assort and preserve them properly, archives come into play. The filmic
material itself too – film copies – becomes fragile and precarious.
Films have to be rescued from the museum; they need to be screened to
find their audience. The challenge arises that preserving is not an act
of guarding, but becomes an act of creating.

03 December 2009 20:00

Robert Bramkamp

How could "Death of Empedokles", a film from 1986 based on the drama by
Friedrich Hölderlin, be envisioned in the year 2009? A conversation
between a 16mm past and a digital presence.

Robert Bramkamp is a filmmaker and author. He teaches at the Art Academy
in Hamburg.

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04 December 2009 19:00

Itinéraire de Jean Bricard

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 2008, France, 40 min. 35mm
projection, French Version

Based on the book by Jean-Yves Petiteau, Itinéraire de Jean Bricard is
the last film that Straub and Huillet made together. In it they show us
the Loire in long moving takes of the river in silvery black-and-white.

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04 December 2009 20:00

Der Tod des Empedokles - Oder wenn der Erde Grün von neuem euch erglänzt

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 1986, France/Germany, 132 min.,
35mm-projection, German Version

In "The Death of Empedocles" the Straubs bring to the screen a poet no
one would dare imagine. Friedrich Hölderlin's "Empedocles" is adapted as
a "communist dream" of life among equal people, peace and harmony with
nature.

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05 December 2009 15:00

Operai Contadini

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 2000, Italy, 123 min., 35mm
projection, Italian with french subtitles

Just as they previously did with Cesare Pavese in "From the Clouds to
the Resistance", the Straubs bring to the screen Elio Vittorini, a great
Italian writer to whom they remain true over a number of films.
"Workers, Peasants" tells the story of a practical, political utopia:
the attempt to create a new, different society among the Greeks
immediately after the war.

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05 December 2009 19:00

Anna Fiacciarini: Translating the Archive

Each archive represents what is behind the creation of a film work. The
translation of the structure of an archive on the web is a sort of
reconstruction of the work done by a group of people which is behind the
creation of films.

Debate with Barbara Ulrich, Anna Fiacciarini and guests

STUDIO 4: A THROW OF DICE

Huillet and Straub constantly questioned the possible transformation
from one medium to another – 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 suggested), the project takes up 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. If so, under what terms?

10 December 2009 20:00

Laura Malacart: Suffering the Language - Translation and Estrangement in
Straub/Huillet

An analysis of Straub/Huillet’s "Sicilia!" in order to address questions
of voice and translation according to a materialist practice informed by
Walter Benjamin and a contemporary reading of Bertolt Brecht’s
alienation principle in theatre performance.

11 December 2009 20:00

Toute révolution est un coup de dés

Studio talk (Part 1). Guest: Ines Schaber

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12 December 2009 20:00

Studio talk (Part 2). Guest: Eyal Sivan and Manon de Boer

STUDIO 5: ACT OF RESISTANCE

In the films of Huillet and Straub the act of speaking becomes an act of
resistance. Resistance against the gods or against fascism. Resistance
of a text against meaningful interpretation, alleged originality or the
most foreseeable such as: workers at work, peasants while farming as
well as further representations or abstractions of a common fate.
Instead, the workers and peasants are inverted into actors who are
speaking in verses. Deleuze once claimed that the act of resistance has
two sides: "It is human, and it is also the act of art." Today this
seems more urgent than ever. The work of art is a form of resistance
against communication.

17 December 2009 18:00

Giulio Bursi On the three versions of Operai Contadini.

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17 December 2009 19:00

Quei loro Incontri (These Encounters of Theirs)

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 2006, Italy, 68 min DVD projection,
Italian with French subtitles.

J'ecoute

Giulio Bursi, 2006, Italy, 103 min. DVD projection, Italian with english
subtitles

Filmed on the set of "Quei loro incontri", a few months before the death
of Danièle Huillet.

Discussion with Giulio Bursi and Pietro Bianchi

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18 December 2009 19:00

Romano Guelfi: Necessity and Change - On Straub's working method

The last Straub-Huillet works in cinema and theatre were based on
Vittorini and Pavese texts, confronting different materials about the
actors and dècoupages preparation for the movies and exploring the
relationships with other traditional forms of representation.

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19 December 2009 16:00

History Lessons

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 1972, Germany/Italy, 94 min.,
16mm-projection, German with English subtitles

The source of History Lessons is Brecht's "Die Geschäfte des Herrn
Julius Caesar". Straub and Huillet only present a fragment of the
incompleted novel. They left out all the anecdotal material and
concentrated on the discussions of economics.

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19 December 2009 18:00

Fortini/Cani

Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, 1976, Germany/Italy, 83 min.,
16mm-projection, Italian with English subtitles

Landscape film without music, about and with Franco Fortini, Italian
poet who wrote a book in the 1960ies entitled "I Cani Del Sinai" (The
Sinai Dogs).

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19 December 2009 20:00

Peter Friedl: Secret modernity

Reading as an "act of resistance".

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