Complete Retrospective
The Goethe-Institut London and its partners are pleased to present 'The Films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet', the first complete UK retrospective of the films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, who have crafted one of the most influential and controversial oeuvres in modern cinema.
Running from March until June 2019 across several London venues, the season will include all of Straub and Huillet’s long and short films directed from 1962 until Huillet’s death in 2006 as well as the films Straub has directed since. Additional events and workshops will provide an opportunity for in-depth engagement with the filmmakers’ unique aesthetics and political engagement. Viewers can experience the exquisite craftsmanship and sheer beauty of their work, as all films will be presented in digital restorations and, whenever possible, in their original format, on new 35mm prints.
Screenings and events will take place at the ICA, BFI Southbank, King’s College London, Goethe-Institut London, Ciné Lumière, Close-Up, and the Whitechapel Gallery. Please see our calendar below for full listings and check this and the other venues' websites for updates.
Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub met in 1954, and in fifty-two years of shared life and work directed twenty-eight feature films. Their oeuvre is one of the most unique, beautiful and uncompromising of modern cinema. From the very start, their films confronted the politics of post-war Europe, and Germany in particular, revealing the historical layers and continuity of violence of the past in the present, something they continued to investigate throughout their vast filmography. Their cinema is as diverse as the texts and documents that have often served as the basis of their films: music by Bach and Schoenberg, writings by Brecht, Hölderlin, Duras, Kafka, Pavese or Vittorini. They reinterpreted forgotten or overlooked classical texts, investing them with a renewed polemical relevance. The films bring stories of class struggle and resistance to the surface, examining relations of power and proposing a critique of capitalism throughout history and across linguistic and territorial borders. Created with intense rigour, beauty and political enthusiasm, each of their films demands our full attention at every moment, reinventing cinema as something still surprising and necessary. They reflect Straub and Huillet’s creativity and generosity, as well as their solidarity for the people they worked with and their respect for language and nature. Critic Louis Séguin once wrote that Straub and Huillet: ‘… belong to a non-hierarchical and frontierless clan of rebels, stateless persons and social misfits, and the challenge of their cinema matches this permanent irreducibility’.
Despite the importance and influence of their work, there has not been a UK retrospective of their films since the early 1990s. With this major retrospective we would like to provide the opportunity to discover their work or to explore it anew and to revisit some of the literature, music and art on which their films are based.
The retrospective is organised by the Goethe-Institut London in collaboration with BELVA Film and in partnership with BFI Southbank, the ICA, the Institut Français, Close-Up Film Centre, King’s College London, the German Screen Studies Network, the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Images (BIMI), and the Whitechapel Gallery. With the kind support from the Embassy of Switzerland in the UK, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Londra, the Instituto Camões, BIRMAC (Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture) and the Department of German, King’s College London.
With thanks to Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, for their cooperation in bringing the 35mm prints to London.
Events continue until 1 June 2019. Please check our calendar for updates.
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01.03.
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01.03.
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02.03.
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04.03.
‘The senses have therefore become directly theoreticians in their practice’: The Intensive Materialism of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub.
6:15 PM - BFI Southbank | Introductory Talk
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04.03.
Machorka-Muff + Nicht versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt, wo Gewalt herrscht
8:30 PM - BFI Southbank | Film Screening
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06.03.
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09.03.
Incendiary Fictions: Straub-Huillet and Screen Adaptation
2:00 PM - King's College London - Nash Lecture Theatre | Workshop & Film Screening
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10.03.
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12.03.
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14.03.
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14.03.
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16.03.
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16.03.
History Lessons: Brecht, Straub-Huillet and the British context
3:50 PM - BFI Southbank | Roundtable
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17.03.
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18.03.
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19.03.
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20.03.
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21.03.
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22.03.
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23.03.
‘Mama, what are modern people?’ Straub-Huillet’s adaptation of Schoenberg’s comic opera
2:00 PM - Goethe-Institut London | Workshop & Film Screening
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24.03.
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30.03.
Straschek, Part 1: 'A last chance to sow my wild oats' – Straschek at the DFFB - Early Films
12:00 PM - Birkbeck Cinema | Film Screening
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31.03.
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01.04.
Günter Peter Straschek, Part 2: Film Emigration from Nazi Germany
Goethe-Institut London and Birkbeck Cinema | Film Screening
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06.04.
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06.04.
Le Genou d’Artemide + Le streghe, femmes entre elles + L'Inconsolable + La Madre
4:15 PM - ICA | Film Screening
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12.04.
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13.04.
O Somma Luce + Cézanne. Dialogue avec Joachim Gasquet
2:00 PM - Goethe-Institut London | Film Screening
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13.04.
Stages of Violence. Antigone by Straub/Huillet, between theatre and film
4:00 PM - Goethe-Institut London | Lecture
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13.04.
Der Bräutigam, die Komödiantin und der Zuhälter + Die Antigone des Sophokles...
6:30 PM - Goethe-Institut London | Film Screening
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23.04.
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25.04.
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26.04.
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27.04.
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28.04.
Straub and Huillet in Buti - Acting and Working Collaboratively
12:00 PM - Goethe-Institut London | Workshop & Film Screening
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01.05.
Klassenverhältnisse + Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film...
7:30 PM - Close-Up Film Centre | Film Screening
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04.05.
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05.05.
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08.05.
Cézanne. Dialogue with Joachim Gasquet + Une Visite au Louvre
6:15 PM - Ciné Lumière - Institut français | Film Screening
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09.05.
Lothringen! + Un Héritier + La mort de Venise + À Propos de Venise
6:30 PM - Ciné Lumière - Institut français | Film Screening
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12.05.
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12.05.
Am Siel + Itinéraire de Jean Bricard + Le 6 Juin à l'aube + Gens du Lac
4:20 PM - Ciné Lumière - Institut français | Film Screening
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13.05.
Corneille – Brecht + Die Antigone des Sophokles...
6:00 PM - Ciné Lumière - Institut français | Film Screening
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15.05.
'Not today but yesterday and tomorrow' - On Italian Literature in the films of Straub-Huillet
6:00 PM - Goethe-Institut London | Conversation
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15.05.
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16.05.
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18.05.
Toute révolution est un coup de dés + Les yeux ne veulent pas en tout temps se fermer...(Othon)
6:00 PM - Close-Up Film Centre | Film Screening
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18.05.
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19.05.
Der Tod des Empedokles + Harun Farocki: Filmtip: Der Tod des Empedokles
8:00 PM - Close-Up Film Centre | Film Screening
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22.05.
Un Conte de Michel de Montaigne + L'Aquarium et la Nation + Où en êtes-vous...
7:00 PM - Close-Up Film Centre | Film Screening
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22.05.
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25.05.
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29.05.
Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules + Arnold Schoenberg
8:15 PM - Close-Up Film Centre | Film Screening
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01.06.
Moses und Aron + Workshop: ‘On the Aesthetics of Equal Distribution’
2:30 PM - Goethe-Institut London | Workshop & Film Screening