Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet | 1984 | Germany | 126’ | EN subs

Cinema’s most challenging filmmaker duo, Straub and Huillet, were frequently drawn to unfinished texts. For Class Relations, one of their supreme accomplishments, they turned to Kafka’s Amerika. “Kafka, for us,” Straub declared, “is the only major poet of industrial civilization, I mean, a civilization where people depend on their work to survive.” Kafka never did visit the America of his novel, so perhaps it’s fitting that the saga of Karl Rossmann, a teenage immigrant from Europe who arrives in a strange new land rife with swindlers and hypocrites, was largely shot in Hamburg. Often celebrated for its refined simplicity, the film encompasses an incredible visual depth, delivered through the use of Brechtian performances, extended takes, and static framing.

Harun Farocki, who plays the role of Delamarche, documented the text rehearsals for some scenes in March 1983 and the shooting of some scenes in August 1983 in his own film, which will be shown at Cavia on Thursday, 2 May.

This screening is part of ‘40 chairs, 40 films, 40 years’, Filmhuis Cavia’s 40th-anniversary program held throughout 2023 and 2024, rewiring and re-reeling images from our past, projecting new ones towards our future.