Skip Norman

An African-American GI retires from the US Army in West Berlin to live with his white girlfriend, who already has a baby with another black man. After an argument with her family, she deserts him as well. Despite finding a job and a new place to live, he keeps running into racism, which also manifests itself in sexual intimidation.

Documentary by Helke Sander, in collaboration with Harun Farocki (among others), about the campaign of the West German New Left against the publishing house Springer, particularly its control and manipulation of the news.

A quiet scene in the snow, a black child in an anorak runs mumbling towards the camera. The pictures are underpinned with a powerful monologue by the co-founder of the Black Panther Party Bobby Seale.

One of the many films drawing a connection between Christmas and war. It is unclear whether the longing for a white Christmas is being taken seriously, or whether it is intended as a denunciation. In either event, America's war in Vietnam is denounced.

A concise blast of feminist film making, Sander's first film is a tense yet playful four minute short that dissects a typical urban scene at a bus stop on a busy street in Berlin.

Scenes from Berlin: Kids playing football, a man tries to light a fire in his stove, a film team sets up a shot in a park, students discuss politics.

Essay film about student protests in Berlin.

Ihre Zeitungen is a political film rooted in the 1968 student campaign against the Springer press group, which controlled popular dailies such as the Berliner Zeitung and the Bild Zeitung. Claiming the latter were manipulating public opinion, the students laid siege to the publisher's offices. These events made a strong impression on the German collective conscience, and it's in this context that Farocki made this "agit-prop" film.

German agitprop film.

Vienna, March 18, 1863: the poet Friedrich Hebbel, weakened by fever, spends his fiftieth — and final — birthday confined to bed. In feverish reverie, he recalls his life and work. The two blend with each other as well as with the present. A demanding reflection, filmed mostly in monochrome images, on this "ardent man" (a description by Eduard Mörike) and his work.

A documentary on the Wilmington 10, 9 afro-Americans and 1 white woman who were unjustly imprisoned. 4K digital restoration by the Academy Film Archive released in 2021.

This short snippet of silent 8 mm film was filmed by Ingrid Oppermann in West-Berlin, possibly close to her apartment in Kurfürstenstraße, where Harun Farocki’s The Words of the Chairman (1967) was shot. The snow that is reflected in the shop window indicates that it must have been the Winter of 1969/70.

An emotional dialogue between a man and a woman, around whom a camera circles in a 360-degree turn.

Using satire as a method of criticism, the film aims to show the ideological constitution of the television stations. Television programs are examined in terms of their mode of operation: Educational programs, family programs within an advertising framework, news, entertainment shows, political magazines are identified as instruments of domination that direct our awareness of social interests without the public itself having access to express opinions in the medium.

Filmed in West Berlin, WARM-UPS, by the American conceptual artist Allan Kaprow, is a recreation of a performance originally enacted in Boston, in which individuals assess the flow of body heat from hands, torsos, and feet to adjacent surfaces. As the film’s voiceover itself notes, “Using words and pictures it condenses the times and spaces of the real event into a graphic illustration of what happened.”

Short experimental film by (and starring) Skip Norman dealing with racism, black/white relations, the blues.

Clearly influenced by Brecht and Jean-Marie Straub, criticizes the reduction of human relations to economic relations as well as the US imperialism in Vietnam.

Skip Norman shot ‘On Africa’ after graduating from the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB). On the level of the image, we see tracking shots through West Berlin, information detailing the economic gains of colonialist exploitations, and photographs from West Africa, while the soundtrack shares facts about the continent’s conquest and decolonization. As Norman himself put it: “The starting point is the relationship between Europe’s prosperity and Africa’s poverty; Europe’s destruction of societies and cultures, and the simultaneous use of Christianity and racial theories as justification for a massive exploitation of the colonized.” ‘On Africa’ was first shown in 1970 and then broadcast on television by WDR in 1972. In 2020, the Harun Farocki Institut was able to digitize a 16mm print from the archive at the WDR.

Starting from a failed Black Panther Party convention (in Washington D.C., November 1970) for a constitution based on their 10-point programme, the film analyses the social condition of black communities. It shows especially the self-help of the blacks in their fight against social repression.

Once crowned "The Princess of Black Poetry," the prolific and political Nikki Giovanni has become one of America's most popular poets. The film highlights the life and work of a poet whose verse appeals to everyone interested in poetry and modern American life. This lyrical and visually provocative film details the poet's coming-of-age against the background of her times: the Civil Rights struggle, Vietnam, and the Women's Movement. In this dynamic portrait, selected readings by Giovanni reveal the values and personal history which have deeply influenced her poetry. Spirit to Spirit unveils the sly wit and sharp insights of Giovanni's multi-layered work, making it a delightful introduction to this talented poet and incisive social commentator. Restored in 2022 by the Academy Film Archive and the Women’s Film Preservation Fund, with support from the Leon Levy Foundation.