Director in Person Presented in co-operation with the Goethe Institute, San Francisco. For information on Goethe Institute screenings of earlier films of Farocki, phone 415/391-0370. (Leben BRD). This retrospective of the German filmmaker Harun Farocki brings attention to a highly original Berlin filmmaker. Farocki is best characterized as a film essayist, part Godard, part Marker, part Kluge, who makes provocative, startling connections between seemingly disparate materials. His latest work, which at first resembles a cinema verité documentary, a depiction of everyday life in Germany, rapidly reveals itself to be a film on the making of a life: an illuminating, often humorous depiction of behind-the-scenes rehearsals for living. Policemen practice handling volatile domestic situations, women rehearse childbirth, bank employees role-play with angry customers, a child in a therapy session represents her family life with dolls, and soldiers enact war. Even washing machines and car doors are put through tests simulating conditions of use. Living, it seems, requires practice, and in scenes filmed in offices, schools, welfare centers, clinics and group therapy sessions, the citizens of West Germany take their lessons. The role-playing games function as carefully controlled worlds where life is managed. Farocki of course sees the relationship between such social realism and movie-making. However, in the dramas he has documented, the lights don't come on to signal a return to the real world. --Kathy Geritz