The Documentary-Films of Harun Farocki: The Interview

Legendary Germany documentarian Harun Farocki leaps off of a subject he briefly presented in his 1990 documentary How to Live in the German Federal Republic. The Interview features a classroom full of under or unemployed German citizens being taught the proper way to appear in a job interview. Farocki's distant yet harsh style of filmmaking shows his true feelings on the how the German public is being taught; an artificial and demeaning process intended to trick employers. During this eye opening deconstruction, we slowly see each interviewee lose their identity, their grip on reality for the primary function to impress an employer under any circumstance. Though the subjects in the film are taught these characteristics, Farocki allows us to examine our own lives and how we naturally practice these qualities even without the help of government aided programs.For fans of Farocki's earlier work this is a must see as it continues to focus on the same themes that have fascinated Farocki all his career, the questioning and political paranoia of what our realities are made up of and the processes that go into creating those realities.