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
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • From Today Until Tomorrow

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

    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.

  • Communists

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

    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.

  • These Encounters of Theirs

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

    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.

  • Black Sin

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

    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.

  • Fortini/Cani

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

    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.

  • Workers, Peasants

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

    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.

  • Cézanne: Conversation with Joachim Gasquet

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

    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.

     

     

  • History Lessons

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

    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.

  • Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?

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

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

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

    • Sunday, March 19 1:30 PM
    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    West Germany, Italy, 1969

    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.

    Introduced by Erik Ulman

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

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

    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).

  • Sicilia!

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

    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.

  • Moses and Aaron

    • Sunday, February 26 1:30 PM
    Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
    West Germany, France, Italy, 1974

    “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.

    Introduced by Erik Ulman

  • Antigone

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

    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.

  • Class Relations

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

    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.

  • From the Cloud to the Resistance

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

    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.

  • Too Early / Too Late

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

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

  • Not Reconciled, Or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules

    • Sunday, January 29 1:30 PM

    West Germany, 1965

    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.

    Introduced by Erik Ulman

  • Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach

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

    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.