Straub-Huillet | Documentaries

From Too Early, Too Late to Europa 2005, non-fiction works by Straub-Huillet.
FORTINI/CANI
FORTINI/CANI
An elegiac and damning meditation on abuses of power and historical amnesia, this film records communist critic Franco Fortini reading excerpts of his book The Dogs of Sinai, which condemns capitalism and the state of Israel in the aftermath of the Six Day War while reflecting on his own Jewish heritage.
EVERY REVOLUTION IS A THROW OF THE DICE
EVERY REVOLUTION IS A THROW OF THE DICE
A recitation of Stéphane Mallarmé’s 1897 poem “A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance” alongside the wall where the last 147 men and women of the Paris Commune were shot dead in 1871.
TOO EARLY/TOO LATE
TOO EARLY/TOO LATE
A major influence on contemporary filmmakers, consisting entirely of a sequence of landscape shots, Straub-Huillet's Too Early / Too Late reflects on Egypt’s history of peasant struggle and liberation from Western colonization, linking it to class tensions in France shortly before the Revolution of 1789. 
PROPOSITION IN FOUR PARTS
PROPOSITION IN FOUR PARTS
Inspired by D. W. Griffith’s 1909 short film A Corner in Wheat, a Biblical tale of avarice, divine retribution, and the prolonged suffering of the masses, Straub-Huillet offer a dialectical montage of cause (capitalist greed) and effect (the poverty of the farmer and the urban underclass).
CEZANNE. CONVERSATION WITH JOACHIM GASQUET
CEZANNE. CONVERSATION WITH JOACHIM GASQUET
Straub-Huillet use passages from Gasquet's invaluable memoir of Paul Cézanne, together with pastoral scenes from Renoir’s Madame Bovary and photographs of Cézanne by the painter Maurice Denis, to make a moving and profound personal essay.
DOLANDO
DOLANDO
At the end of filming Umiliati, Straub and Huillet gave thanks to the cast and crew in a graceful way: by inviting Dolando Bernardini to sing several stanzas from Torquato Tasso’s 16th-century epic poem Jerusalem Delivered.
A VISIT TO THE LOUVRE
A VISIT TO THE LOUVRE
Straub-Huillet's visit to the Louvre reflects their fierce sentiments on art and their way of looking, using the words of Paul Cézanne to critique images, to be venomous about some artists and honey-tongued about others.
EUROPA 2005, 27 OCTOBER
EUROPA 2005, 27 OCTOBER
On October 27, 2005, two teenage boys of Mauritanian and Tunisian origin were electrocuted as they fled the police. Their deaths sparked nearly three weeks of riots across France. Straub-Huillet document this tragedy in their final collaboration, an imaginative response to Rossellini's Europa ’51.
ITINERARY OF JEAN BRICARD
ITINERARY OF JEAN BRICARD
Straub films Coton Island, home of Jean Bricard and site of Nazi atrocities, against a stark and leaden winter light, using deliberatively long tracking shots and nearly still compositions to evoke a kind of enduring resilience.
JOACHIM GATTI
JOACHIM GATTI
A short, but powerful work in which Straub responds fiercely to the senseless blinding of a French activist filmmaker during a peaceful protest
CONCERNING VENICE (HISTORY LESSONS)
CONCERNING VENICE (HISTORY LESSONS)
Waters lap gently against the shore as Barbara Ulrich recites Maurice Barrès’s essay about the past glories and tenuous fate of the Most Serene Republic.
THE AQUARIUM AND THE NATION
THE AQUARIUM AND THE NATION
In his newest work, Straub considers Malraux's writings while creating a cosmic interplay between Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Our Savior, a fish tank at a Parisian Chinese restaurant, Renoir’s 1938 film La Marseillaise, and the Jung Institute of Paris.