In the Street/Un giorno in Barbagia/Aufsätze/High School
Is the real learning done while playing? Is life on the street better than training on campus to become a perfect adult? What is education? Is it all about learning to write, to repeat what’s been written and to add up the numbers? Or is it about not forgetting how to see and hear and sing and dance? Could it be both?
As co-writer James Agee states at the beginning of Helen Levitt’s In the Streets, the urban landscape unfolds “as theatre and battleground” for its children. Vittorio De Seta’s film, portraying the women and children of a shepherd village in Sardinia, is one of ten short masterpieces he made at the end of the 1950s. In Peter Nestler’s Aufsätze (Essays) schoolchildren read aloud some of the stories which they wrote down beforehand. “Each presentation is different. Each kid tries to find a way to maintain an audible volume. And each of them has a pathos all their own. The Swiss-German dialect with its oscillating melodies brings out the sing-songy nature of the exercise.” (Rainer Gansera)
Constantin Wulff on High School: “In his portrait of the Philadelphia Northeast High School, Wiseman reveals himself to be a harsh critic of institutionalised uniformity and its destructiveness. The daily lives of the school kids, mainly white upper-middle-class teenagers, are portrayed as a series of ongoing disciplinary measures. He presents us with a laconic depiction of a type of teaching that is less about imparting knowledge than instilling socially acceptable behaviour (one schoolgirl is forced to apologise: ‘I didn’t mean to be individualistic’). Against the backdrop of the 1968 protests and the Vietnam War, Wiseman shows the school as a bastion of ideology and the dark heart of a nation. The film moves relentlessly towards its riveting finale when the letter of a former student, who is about to be sent to Vietnam, is read aloud: ‘I’m only a body doing a job.’ His teacher responds proudly, ‘Now when you get a letter like this, to me it means that we are very successful!’”
In the Street
Helen Levitt, 1944/1952, 16mm, b/w No dialogues
Un giorno in Barbagia
Vittorio de Seta, 1958, 35mm, Colour, English St
Aufsätze
Peter Nestler, 1963, 35mm, b/w
High School
Frederick Wiseman, 1968, 16mm, b/w
As co-writer James Agee states at the beginning of Helen Levitt’s In the Streets, the urban landscape unfolds “as theatre and battleground” for its children. Vittorio De Seta’s film, portraying the women and children of a shepherd village in Sardinia, is one of ten short masterpieces he made at the end of the 1950s. In Peter Nestler’s Aufsätze (Essays) schoolchildren read aloud some of the stories which they wrote down beforehand. “Each presentation is different. Each kid tries to find a way to maintain an audible volume. And each of them has a pathos all their own. The Swiss-German dialect with its oscillating melodies brings out the sing-songy nature of the exercise.” (Rainer Gansera)
Constantin Wulff on High School: “In his portrait of the Philadelphia Northeast High School, Wiseman reveals himself to be a harsh critic of institutionalised uniformity and its destructiveness. The daily lives of the school kids, mainly white upper-middle-class teenagers, are portrayed as a series of ongoing disciplinary measures. He presents us with a laconic depiction of a type of teaching that is less about imparting knowledge than instilling socially acceptable behaviour (one schoolgirl is forced to apologise: ‘I didn’t mean to be individualistic’). Against the backdrop of the 1968 protests and the Vietnam War, Wiseman shows the school as a bastion of ideology and the dark heart of a nation. The film moves relentlessly towards its riveting finale when the letter of a former student, who is about to be sent to Vietnam, is read aloud: ‘I’m only a body doing a job.’ His teacher responds proudly, ‘Now when you get a letter like this, to me it means that we are very successful!’”
In the Street
Helen Levitt, 1944/1952, 16mm, b/w No dialogues
Un giorno in Barbagia
Vittorio de Seta, 1958, 35mm, Colour, English St
Aufsätze
Peter Nestler, 1963, 35mm, b/w
High School
Frederick Wiseman, 1968, 16mm, b/w
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