The Interview

In the summer of 1996 we filmed application training courses in which one learns how to apply for a job. School drop outs, university graduates, people who have to be retrained, the long-term unemployed, recovered drug addicts and mid-term managers – all of them are supposed to learn how to how to market and sell themselves, a skill to which the term “self-management” is applied. The self is perhaps nothing but a metaphysical hook from which to hang a social identity. It was Kafka who likened being accepted for a job to entering the Kingdom of Heaven; the paths leading to both of them are completely uncertain. Today one speaks of getting a job with the greatest obsequiousness, but without any grand expectations.

-- Harun Farocki

Cinematographer: Ingo Kratisch; Second Cinematographer Bernd Löhr; Editor: Max Reimann; Sound: Ludger Blanke; Music: Neil Young; Researcher: Ludger Blanke; Production: Harun Farocki Film-produktion, Berlin, for den Süd-deutschen Rundfunk; Stuttgart Producer: Harun Farocki; TV Producer: Juliane Endres