Football (Soccer) as Never Before (Fut Ball Wie Noch Nie)

Costard used six cameras to record the motions of professional soccer wing-forward George Best during the course of a game between his team, Manchester United, and Coventry City. What makes this an uncommon sports film is its dogged concentration on the figure of Best; he runs, he strolls, he waits and the crowd roars, but isolated by the camera he's a man without a context and the audience is caught in the act of restoring him with a narrative. Like The Oppression of Women..., Football as Never Before is an absorbing meditation that resembles a sustained experiment: What happens when you remove the subject of your “story”?

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