TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

Throughout the evening during which most of the story takes place, the young woman takes pictures of customers or her co-workers at the bar. Every time the shutter clicks the movie appears to halt for a moment, even though it continues nevertheless:^[5] cinema and photography merge, showing also that every image in the film, in any film, is a “single image” with the potential to exist independently even though it only takes on meaning in combination with those which precede or follow it. Assi Dayan’s film was already denouncing in 1992 the spiral of deadly, absurd violence into which his country was sinking. With the energy of despair, its protagonist takes snapshots of life which insist, rather than composing portraits. She immortalises ordinary moments in a country in a perpetual state of exception. After the final massacre, perpetrated by hateful soldiers, there remain in the apartment only the photographs hanging in a line. The camera then moves in the opposite direction to that at the beginning, nevertheless bringing our gaze back once again to the window, where life may perhaps continue.

With Still Life, shot in 1997, Haroun Farocki transposed some of his concerns to the documentary. The film follows the activities of several advertising photographers looking for the “perfect” picture which will satisfy their clients with its photographic qualities. For one hour, Farocki’s movie camera turns around a complex, almost esoteric apparatus of heavy machinery converging towards a single goal: to produce a photographic image. Resources, skills, personnel, time, money, adaptation strategies, ingenious problem solving, movements measured to the millimetre: everything is buzzing around this still life which remains to be made. An immense effort is expended to become intoxicated by this illusion, that of stopping time.