Workers Leaving The Factory

Abstract

The film workers leaving the lumière factory in lyon (1895) by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière is forty-five seconds long and shows the roughly one hundred workers at the factory for photographic goods in Lyon-Montplaisir leaving the factory through two gates and exiting the frame to both sides.Over the past twelve months, I set myself the task of tracking down the theme of this film, workers leaving the workplace, in as many variants as possible.Examples were found in documentaries, industrial and propaganda films, newsreels, and features.I left out TV archives which offer an immeasurable number of references for any given keyword as well as the archives of cinema and television advertising in which industrial work hardly ever occurs as a motif -commercial film's dread of factory work is second only to that of death.Berlin, 1934: Siemens factory workers and employees leave the premises in marching order to attend a Nazi rally.There is a column of war invalids, and many are wearing white overalls as if to bring the idea of militarised science into the shot.German Democratic Republic, 1963 (without precise localisation): A Betriebskampfgruppe -a worker combat unit or militia made up of workers under the leadership of the party -turn, out for manoeuvres.Very serious men and women in uniform climb into military light vehicles and drive to the woods where they will encounter men who are also wearing flat caps pushed into their necks and are posing as saboteurs.As the convoy drives out through the gate, the factory looks like a barracks.Federal Republic of Germany, 1975: A small loudspeaker van is parked in front of the Volkswagen plant in Emden and plays music with lyrics by Vladimir Mayakovsky and vocals by Ernst Busch.A man from the labour union calls on the workers leaving the early shift to attend a meeting protesting against the plan to transfer production to the US.The labour union uses optimistic, revolutionary music as backing for the image of industrial workers in the Federal Republic of 1975; music echoing from the actual scene and not, as was the stupid practice in so many films around 1968, just from the soundtrack.Ironically, the workers put up with this music precisely because the break with communism was so total that they are no longer aware that the song evokes the October Revolution.In

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