Cahiers du Cinéma's November 1981 introduction of Farocki needs to be updated.Admittedly, much of Harun Farocki's early television work is buried in the cellars of several German broadcasters and his short films are not in distribution. But he has completed a second full-length feature film, ETWAS WIRD SICHTBAR (BEFORE YOUR EYES – VIETNAM).

The title could translate as ‘Something Is Coming to Light’, and with it, something more about Farocki deserves to come to light as well. Not necessarily about him as an individual (although he is a colourful personality on the Berlin film scene), not even about his production methods (Farocki first appears in BETWEEN TWO WARS putting captions on photos of nude women: ‘Mona loves freedom’; ‘Ina loves death’ etc., while his voice-over explains that in order to finance this film he ‘accepted any job that demanded covering sensuality with words, as is the rule in the culture business’). There needs to be far more attention given to the fact that Farocki is a writer of images. Paradoxically, Farocki was for a long time probably more important as a writer than as a filmmaker. His films were more written about than seen, and instead of considering this a failing or something to his discredit, it actually consolidates his significance in the world of cinema and emphasises his considerable role in the German political avant-garde.

Between Two Wars

In 1970, the political journal Kursbuch reprinted a brief essay on the technological reorganisation of the German coal and steel industries in the 1920s.Written by Alfred Sohn-Rethel, a Marxist economist close to the Frankfurt School, who spent most of his life in exile in Britain, the essay outlines in a concise style the economic interest and seemingly inescapable logic that led the German industrial bourgeoisie to lend Hitler financial support and make common cause with Nazism.