2009/04/24

leben-brd

a laconic, formally stringent documentary on how german people prepare for the unforeseeable events in life, take cautions, calculate risks, ponder on insurerancies and practice living life in the supposedly expected, state-approved, licensed way.
harun farocki films couples in courses learning how to wash new born babies in the synchronized choreography the nurse teacher propagates, families learning how to communicate with each other, policemen preparing acquaintances with deliquents by playing deliquents themselves in trials and rehearsals with each other, didactic role plays forced on unemployed people, to practice how to present and sell themselves to society.
all kinds of produced and dogmatic, uniform, identity creating behaviour patterns are being naturalized, normalized and taught to the people who annex and incorporate these, making of their universally ignorant, chaotic existences, trained "professionals", disciplined and empty counselors of the so-called relevant issues in life.
i found it incredibly tragic how the trust in their own feelings and sensations of being alive was completely subordinated to the false desire to obtain patriarchal approval, all the seals and stamps in the passports, the money back guarantee operation manual to life, -and i do think that the militarized institutions of society, most schools, colleges, offices, factories and families are doing just the same by controlling and not allowing the color to drip outside the outlines.
this kind of conversely reminds me of my days at steiner school as a kid, when i wasn´t allowed to draw outlines because everything was supposed to drip all over the place on the soaking wet water color paper we were given, that i used to despise, because i was so attracted by geometrical forms, rulers and outlines at the time. -the same dogma the other way around, i guess.
i remember one annual report stating "jana is very fond of water color painting, but she does not use the light colors, takes mostly dark pigments and tends to dry her paper with her shirt sleeve".
whatever.
anyway: -a great and hard to watch movie.
the best i´ve seen this year, allthough it is an oldy from 1990.
bravo, harun farocki.

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