The first complete retrospective of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet in the UK
1 March — 1 June 2019
Running from 1 March until 1 June 2019 across several prominent London venues, the retrospective will include Straub and Huillet’s long and short films directed between 1962 and 2006. The retrospective will also feature Jean-Marie Straub’s video works after Danièle Huillet’s death in 2006. Additional events and workshops will provide an opportunity for in-depth encounters with the unique aesthetics and political engagement of the filmmakers, whose unwavering artistic resolve and clear stance against political and economic oppression are more relevant than ever. Viewers will be able to experience the exquisite craftsmanship and sheer beauty of their work, as all films are presented in digitally restored copies and on 35mm prints with English subtitles.
Screenings and events will take place at the ICA, BFI Southbank, King’s College London, Goethe-Institut London, Ciné Lumière, Close-Up, Birkbeck Cinema and Whitechapel Gallery.
The couple first met in Paris in 1954, then moved to Germany in the early 1960s, where they established their critical reputation with the two features Non Reconciled… (1965) and Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1967). From the beginning, their films were radical in form, uncompromising, and often polemical. With a highly original approach to adaptation, Straub and Huillet found new ways to interpret works by prominent European intellectuals and artists such as Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Friedrich Hölderlin, Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini, Pierre Corneille, Arnold Schoenberg, Franco Fortini, Marguerite Duras or Paul Cézanne. Straub and Huillet filmed in Germany, France and Italy, where they also lived, making the performance of the various languages a key element of their work.
The retrospective is organised by the Goethe-Institut London in collaboration with BELVA Film and in partnership with BFI Southbank, ICA, Institut Français, Close-Up Film Centre, King’s College London, German Screen Studies Network, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Images (BIMI) and Whitechapel Gallery.
With kind support from the Embassy of Switzerland in the UK, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Londra, Instituto Camões, BIRMAC (Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture) and the Department of German at King’s College London.
For more information and programme overview please visit the Goethe-Institut London website.