On 22 May George Best, the legendary Northern Irish footballer, would have been 70 years old. To celebrate this anniversary we will show Hellmuth Costard’s radical portrait of the much loved player, who scored many goals for Manchester United and was not only known for his tempo and technique, but also for his good looks. Long before Scottish artist Douglas Gordon made his famous portrait of the French star player Zidane (2006), Costard had the idea of focusing six 16mm-film cameras (some descriptions mention eight) on George Best during a match, making him the exclusive focus of our attention and allowing us to study each of his movements and his absolute mastery over the ball. A must-see for all George Best fans and anyone interested in the art of football. The film also makes us aware of how much television coverage directs how we see a football match, in this case a match between Manchester United and Coventry City.
Hellmuth Costard, who was born in Holzhausen, Leipzig in 1940, moved to Hamburg to study Psychology and co-founded the Hamburg Filmmakers’ Co-operative with others such as Helmut Herbst, Thomas Struck, Werner Nekes, Dore O., Klaus Wyborny and Heinz Emigholz. Though little known outside Germany, Costard was an important figure in the German experimental film scene. He gained notoriety with his film
Besonders Wertvoll (Particularly Valuable, 1968) which showed a talking penis criticising West German film funding policies. Though initially approved of by the festival committee, the film was banned from the Oberhausen Short Film Festival by the local city council in 1968 leading to a protest and festival boycott of many filmmakers and jury members. In 1979 Jean-Luc Godard defined Costard as a filmmaker who was interested in the technology of images rather than in words and who mixed poetry and criticism to question established rules and perspectives. Filmmaker Harun Farocki, who himself studied the technologies used to analyse matches and the movements of players, was among the fans of Football As Never Before. Farocki commented in 2007. “It is still surprising today how little time a player spends with the ball during a match, and how little even a star player like George Best used to run in those days.” (Neue Filmkritik 2007).
West Germany 1970, colour, 105mins. No dialogue. Director: Hellmuth Costard. With George Best.
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