April 2012, arsenal cinema

Working Environments in Film

LONESOME, 1928

We are accompanying a seminar given by Ulrike Vedder and Alexandra Tacke at the Humboldt University on Working Environments in Literature and Film with a film series that will continue in June and July. The focus of the series are films which observe the upheavals in the world of work, looking at the 20s and 30s on the one hand and the last few years on the other.

ARBEITER VERLASSEN DIE FABRIK (Harun Farocki, Germany 1995, May 15, introductory presentation by Ulrike Vedder, with a discussion with Harun Farocki following the film) The Lumière Brothers' film forms the starting point for Farocki's essay film, in which he places different variants of this cinematic topos in relationship to one another and comments on them in a voiceover. How is it, he asks himself, that the factory has remained a location of only secondary importance in film history?

Beforehand, we will be showing LA SORTIE DES USINES LUMIÈRE À LYON (Auguste and Louis Lumière, France 1895), which shows workers leaving the factory through its gates. 

LONESOME (Paul Fejos, USA 1928, May 22, introductory presentation by Alexandra Tacke, piano accompaniment by Eunice Martins) Telephonist Mary and worker Jim each begin their day alone: getting up in a small rented room, getting dressed, breakfast, the journey to work in the overfilled subway, finally work at the factory – every movement has become a ritual after having been repeated a thousand times over. At midday, they then head out to Coney Island. It is there that they meet, freed from the compulsions of day-to-day life. The first Hollywood film by Hungarian Paul Fejos is a visual ode to the city of New York and its people.

WORKING GIRLS (Dorothy Arzner, USA 1931, May 29, introductory presentation by Dagmar von Hoff) The sisters May and June move from the American Mid-West to New York in order to start a new existence as working girls. Whilst looking for freedoms of not just an economic nature, they are confronted by both opportunity and restriction; the intermingling of love and work, profit and desire form the focus of the film.