Not Reconciled: The Cinema of Straub & Huillet

January 26–May 14, 2017

The duo of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet created one of the most uncompromising, yet eternally surprising, filmmaking aesthetics in postwar European cinema. Discover the films that inspired Harun Farocki, Pedro Costa, John Gianvito, and others.

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  • Antigone

  • Not Reconciled, or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules

  • Moses and Aaron

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    Italy/West Germany, 1967
    Thursday, January 26 7 PM

    Loosely based on correspondence between Johann Sebastian Bach and his second wife, Chronicle is not a film about music, it is a film of music. With short.

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  • Not Reconciled, Or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules

    West Germany, 1965
    Sunday, January 29 1:30 PM
    Introduced by Erik Ulman

    Straub-Huillet take dynamite to the fabric of postwar Germany in this powerful adaptation of a Heinrich Böll story about a German family before, during, and after the Nazi era. With shorts.

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  • Too Early / Too Late

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    France, 1982
    Sunday, February 5 2 PM

    Scenes from the French countryside and urban Egypt bookend this “politicized landscape” film, based on letters by Friedrich Engels and two militant Egyptian Marxists.

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  • From the Cloud to the Resistance

    Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub
    Italy / West Germany, 1979
    Sunday, February 12 2 PM

    Straub-Huillet showcase two key texts by the great Italian poet/novelist Cesare Pavese, one on the mythological gods above, the other on a real-life anti-fascist massacre. With short En rachâchant.

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  • Class Relations

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    West Germany, 1984
    Thursday, February 16 7 PM

    A young immigrant finds America as confusing (and class-ridden) as the old world in Straub-Huillet’s claustrophobic adaptation of a Kafka story. With Harun Farocki’s Jean Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film Based on Franz Kafka’s Amerika.

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  • Antigone

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    France, Germany, 1991
    Sunday, February 19 2 PM

    Straub-Huillet bring multiple layers of history to life in their dramatic vision of Bertolt Brecht’s version of the poet Hölderlin’s adaptation of Sophocles’s Antigone, here restaged in Sicily’s ancient and atmospheric Teatro di Segesta.

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  • Moses and Aaron

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    West Germany, France, Italy, 1974
    Sunday, February 26 1:30 PM
    Introduced by Erik Ulman

    “The best opera film ever made” (P. Adams Sitney), Moses and Aaron presents Schoenberg’s great opera in the Roman Alba Fucense amphitheater. “A film in which every cut, every camera movement counts for so much” (New Yorker Films). With short.

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  • Sicilia!

    Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub
    Italy, France, 1999
    Sunday, March 5 2 PM

    Sentences become arias as one man’s return to Sicily inspires recollections of corruption, treachery, and political and personal woe in this “masterpiece” (Artforum). With companion piece Return of the Prodigal Son / Humiliated.

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  • The Death of Empedocles, or When the Green of the Earth Will Glisten for You Anew

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    France, West Germany, 1986
    Sunday, March 12 2 PM

    Greek philosopher Empedocles finds himself both a hero of the people and an enemy of the state in this staging of a Hölderlin play on spectacular Mount Etna. Its style “reveals a utopian present” (Artforum).

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  • Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times, or Perhaps One Day Rome Will Permit Herself to Choose in Her Turn

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    West Germany, Italy, 1969
    Sunday, March 19 1:30 PM
    Introduced by Erik Ulman

    Contemporary Rome is never far away in Straub-Huillet’s self-aware adaptation of a Corneille play about the Roman Empire. With short Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice.

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  • Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?

    Pedro Costa
    France, Portugal, 2001
    Wednesday, March 22 7 PM

    Pedro Costa witnesses Straub and Huillet at work in the editing room in this revelatory study of the moviemaking process” (The New Yorker).

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  • History Lessons

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    Italy, West Germany, 1972
    Sunday, March 26 2 PM

    This notorious adaptation of Brecht’s The Business Affairs of Mr. Julius Caesar envisions the leader through his business underlings, and the Roman Empire through contemporary Roman traffic. With short Concerning Venice.

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  • Cézanne: Conversation with Joachim Gasquet

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    France, West Germany, 1989
    Sunday, April 2 2 PM

    Straub and Huillet pay tribute to one of their artistic heroes. With the companion film A Visit to the Louvre, featuring Cezanne's uncompromising examination of paintings by Ingres, Delacroix, Courbet, Tintoretto, and others.

     

     

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  • Workers, Peasants

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    Italy, France, 2000
    Thursday, April 20 7 PM

    A roster of nonprofessional actors from Pisa bring to life a famed Marxist novella, Women of Messina, in Straub-Huillet’s stunning treatise on community and opposition. With short Incantati.

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  • Fortini/Cani

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    Italy, 1976
    Sunday, April 23 2 PM

    Straub-Huillet’s aesthetic of spoken word plus projected image, history plus landscape, was boiled to its essence in this cine-essay featuring legendary Italian New Left figure Franco Fortini. With Lothringen!, based on novels byMaurice Barrès.

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  • Black Sin

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    West Germany, 1988
    Sunday, April 30 2 PM

    History doubles back on itself like a noose in Straub-Huillet’s second version of The Death of Empedocles, as the Greek philosopher advocates for democracy for his people, with tragic results. With Itinerary of Jean Bricard.

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  • These Encounters of Theirs

    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    France, Italy, 2005
    Thursday, May 4 7 PM

    The musings of the gods are brought to the earthly realms of contemporary rural Italy in Straub and Huillet’s re-creation of Cesare Pavese’s 1947 book Dialogues with Leucò. With Proposition in Four Parts.

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  • Communists

    Jean-Marie Straub
    France, Switzerland, 2014
    Sunday, May 7 2 PM

    This digital meditation on struggle and resistance “is the closest Straub has come to an autobiographical film” (Artforum). With shorts The Algerian War! and The Aquarium and the Nation.

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  • From Today Until Tomorrow

    Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub
    Germany, France, 1996
    Sunday, May 14 4 PM

    An opera film with all attention on the performances and the music, and a thing of beauty. A husband and wife return from a party and begin to speak and sing of romantic rivals and possibilities. With shorts The Inconsolable One and Dialogue with Shadows.

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