The Education (2011) - Dirk Lütter

The Education (2011) - Dir: Dirk Lütter

An intense exploration of the corporate office space. Nothing much happens, but the constant threat of being made redundant looms. Spying on your colleagues and reporting anything that may make them look bad to bosses is actively encouraged, which seems rather similar to the way KGB or the Stasi operated. The smallest bit of information that you provide may mean the loss of a much-needed job to someone. This affects the way people interact in the office environment. The icy cold, steel-grey palette used enhances the threat and plays down anything mildly warm. The only escape is shopping malls, gadgets and other objects of pleasure available, such as games. The few outdoor scenes provide only a limited relief to the characters and to viewers, which in turn enhances the claustrophobia of the work environment. A must-watch for service-sector employees and those who hope to boost their economic situation thanks to them.

Prison images (2000) - Harun Farocki

A film composed of images from prisons. Quotes from fiction films and documentaries as well as footage from surveillance cameras. A look at the new control technologies, at personal identification devices, electronic ankle bracelets, electronic tracking devices. The cinema has always been attracted to prisons. Today's prisons are full of video surveillance cameras. These images are unedited and monotonous; as neither time nor space is compressed, they are particularly well-suited to conveying the state of inactivity into which prisoners are placed as a punitive measure. The surveillance cameras show the norm and reckon with deviations from it. Clips from films by Genet and Bresson. Here the prison appears as a site of sexual infraction, a site where human beings must create themselves as people and as a workers. In Un Chant d'amour by Jean Genet, the guard looks in on inmates in their cells and sees them masturbating. The inmates are aware that they are being watched and thus become performers in a peep show. The protagonist in Bresson's Un Condamné à mort s'est échappé turns the objects of imprisonment into the tools of his escape. These topoi appear in many prison films. In newer prisons, in contrast, contemporary video surveillance technology aims at demystification.

- Harun Farocki