Director in Person (Wie man sieht) To view one of Farocki's film essays is to accept an intellectual challenge. He brings together diverse materials and ideas to explore elements of modernism at a meta-level. Central to his concerns, as many of his titles suggest, is sight, and its relationship to systems of representation. The fascinating As You See is concerned with different manifestations of technology. Farocki examines the history and implications of the development of such landmarks of the modern age as machine guns, the plow, automated weaving and the freeway. He questions whose interests they serve, what priorities they privilege, and likewise, whose interests they ignore and what priorities they supplant. Technological advances are represented as a movement away from meaning attached to human existence. For example, As You See postulates that crossroads, which carried merchants, travelers, and the military from place to place, were also the spots where towns developed. Their replacement by "intertwinings" or freeways privileges speed over human interaction. Farocki suggests that along with the existing routes from A to B, alternatives should be offered. He concludes with one: a bus designed by a cooperative to run on both rail and road, and envisioned as of particular significance for the Third World. It is a technology seen in terms of need, not progress for its own sake. --Kathy Geritz