TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Christian Petzold

Où en êtes-vous, Christian Petzold ?

Christian Petzold
2017 - France / Germany - 23mn

Où en êtes-vous ? is a collection initiated by the Pompidou Centre, which commissions each guest director to make a film in a free form to reply to this question which is retrospective, introspective, turned to the future, their desires, their projects.

Christian Petzold undertakes with Christoph Hochhäusler, himself a filmmaker, the analysis of a sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956), from a series of photograms. They talk about framing, blocking, performance, documentaries, and dreams, leading to the essential question of the role of the narrator and, with this, the director. The two speak freely and easily. All you can see of them is their hands handling the photographs, without being able to distinguish who is talking. Whatever: what counts is the exchange, the reflection, and the shared passion. With this homage to Harun Farocki, who died in 2014, Christian Petzold wants to give life to and perpetuate the spirit, the taste, and the method of his former teacher and friend, who collaborated on the screenplays of all his films.