"What Farocki Taught" debuts at Rotterdam

Ted Mandell (Theodore.E.Mandell.1@nd.edu)
Wed, 11 Mar 1998 15:08:05 -0500

Jill Godmilow's latest film <italic>What Farocki Taught</italic> , shot
in South Bend during the summer of '96, debuted at the Rotterdam Film
Festival in February to rave reviews. Here's an excerpt from Gerald
Peary's article in the Boston Phoenix:

"...the world premiere of a fabulously Brechtian 30-minute film
<italic>What Farocki Taught</italic>, by Jill Godmilow, which she made
with her film students at Notre Dame University. Godmilow took a
30-year-old work by the Egyptian-German director Harun Farocki, and
reshot it exactly, frame-by-frame, camera position by camera position.
Farocki's was a Vietnam War-era inquiry into civilian responsibility
for the development of killer napalm; it was set at Dow Chemical
headquarters in Michigan. As reconfigured by Godmilow, the film is
intellectually rigorous and emotionally frightening, a ferocious,
committed, important historical/political tract for the amnesiac
'90's."

Cheers to Jill !!!