Harun Farocki: Films and Installations, 1966–2014

Bangkok International Film Festival 2025, in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Thailand and Harun Farocki GbR, presents the first major retrospective in Southeast Asia dedicated to films and installations by Harun Farocki, curated by Pathompong Manakitsomboon and Antje Ehmann.

Harun Farocki was a German filmmaker, media artist, and theorist whose work profoundly reshaped how images are understood in relation to politics, war, and labour.

Born in 1944 in Nový Jičín, in what is today the Czech Republic, he studied at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) from 1966 to 1968. Beginning his career amid the radical atmosphere of the late 1960s, Farocki soon became a distinctive voice in European cinema, known for a critical and essayistic approach that combined found footage, documentary material, and analytical commentary.

Over the course of nearly five decades, Farocki created more than one hundred films, videos, and multi-channel installations. His works interrogated the ways images are produced and circulated, from military simulations and industrial processes to advertising, surveillance, and everyday media. Projects such as Inextinguishable Fire (1969), Images of the World and the Inscription of War (1988), and Serious Games (2009–2010) exemplify his sustained engagement with what he described as “images that operate.” Through a practice grounded in both critique and inquiry, Farocki revealed how images function as instruments of power while simultaneously opening them to new forms of interpretation. His legacy remains vital in contemporary discussions of media, technology, and visual culture.

Farocki also contributed as an editor of Filmkritik (1974–1984) and as a teacher in institutions including UC Berkeley and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, influencing generations of artists and thinkers. His installations and films have been shown internationally at major museums, biennials, and film festivals, including documenta in Kassel, the Venice Biennale, MoMA in New York, Tate Modern in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Haus der Kunst in Munich, and numerous other institutions across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

The projects by the Bangkok International Film Festival, the Goethe-Institut Thailand, and the Harun Farocki GbR consist of three parts:
 

1. Harun Farocki: Films and Installations, 1966–2014 presents a comprehensive survey of Farocki’s film works, gathering works produced over nearly five decades, from 1966 to 2014. The selection features 29 films, ranging from early shorts and features to works originally conceived for installation. The screenings take place as part of the Bangkok International Film Festival programme.

1. The installation Parallel I–IV (2012–2014) Farocki’s final and landmark multi-channel installation. Hosted at Goethe-Institut Thailand, this four-part video installation is regarded as a seminal work in media art and a crucial piece of cultural critique on computer animation. This marks the first time the installation is being exhibited in Southeast Asia.

1. Labour in a Single Shot: An Artist Talk by Antje Ehmann, introduces the global project she initiated with Farocki in 2011, documenting contemporary forms of work through single-take videos. The talk will take place at the Goethe-Institut Thailand Library.