Jeffrey Skoller, associate professor of film and media at UC Berkeley, is the author of Shadows, Specters, Shards: Making History in Avant-Garde Film

In the first of two program paying tribute to Farocki's film and video work, we focus on his short filmss. In Farocki's words: “Four days spent in a studio working on a centerfold photo for Playboy magazine provided the subject matter for (An Image) . . . The naked woman in the middle is a sun around which a system revolves: of culture, of business, of living!” I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts presents “images from the Maximum Security Prison in Corcoran, California . . . With the camera and the gun side by side, the field of view and field of fire merge together.” His most recent film, A New Product, consists of “scenes from meetings within a company, which advises corporations how to design their offices-and the work done there. The film shows that words are not just tools, they have become an object of speculation.”