Something Self Explanatory

Over the course of 15 teaching units, the Marxist vocabulary for commodity and work, wage and labour power, exchange value and use value is thought about via images. The vignettes are captivating in their directness. What they drive at is always unequivocal, as they not only invoke political concepts with precision, but also bring together cinematic modes of thinking that are the equivalent of these concepts: Political position and aesthetic form merge; the didactic procedure leads to a dialectical form, which is expressed in visual montages, camera pans, the division of the image space, the adoption of a perspective. It seems only logical that towards the end, the format of the educational film disappears and the piece takes on the feel of narrative genre cinema: “The intention is to make a person who is walking think about walking so that he falls down.” (Bitomsky and Farocki) (Berlinale)