Harun Farocki – who also taught for several years in Vienna – used film like few others as an analytical tool to dissect labor and production relations. In Workers Leaving the Factory (1995), he revisits the Lumière brothers’ iconic motif a century after the birth of cinema, editing footage of workers leaving factory gates (or demonstrating in front of them) into an engaging essay film. From offscreen, he reflects on power and surveillance, the factory gate versus the prison gate.
In For Comparison (2009), the experimental setup is as simple as it is visually compelling: how are bricks produced in different parts of the world, in India, Africa, or even Lower Austria? Farocki provides only the footage – along with a few intertitles. The act of comparing pre-industrial, early-industrial, and highly industrialized production societies, and drawing conclusions regarding the division of labor, wealth, and community, is left to the viewers. (Jörg Markowitsch)

With an introduction by Christoph A. Büttner