影片拍摄于1967年，是至今为止关于伟大的音乐家巴赫最优秀的影片，片名来源于英国作家同名小说，片中引用的对话、信件都取自巴赫生前的真实文件档案。影片几乎汇集了当时音乐演奏界的精英，如哈侬考特、奥古斯特·温钦格等，具有非常高的史料价值。与我们平日看到肖像画上胖而结实的巴赫完全不同，由著名钢琴演奏家和指挥家古斯塔夫·莱昂哈扮演的巴赫显得瘦小文弱。影片问世后得到了当时影评界的激赏。

改编自卡夫卡未完成的长篇小说《美国》，但其关注的并非真实的美国，更像是没有详细年代的关于美国的寓言。卡尔•罗斯曼由于丑闻而接受其舅舅的邀请搬去美国，然而他无法摆脱欧洲大陆旧式习惯，更糟的是，欧洲的阶级结构无法让他通过自己的双手谋生。这一电影版关注资本主义社会创造的残酷而变幻莫测的阶级关系。同时忠于原著而未添加影片的结局。施特劳布夫妇风格的一贯操作与卡夫卡氛围的完美结合：中景固定机位，面无表情的演员，人物肢体和语言刻意僵硬，强调侧面特写，镜头推进及平移刻意突兀。由此我们可以寻求到改编卡夫卡作品的带实验性的可能。

　　一如他曾把卡夫卡小說幾乎「抽象」化，也把巴哈女士日記拍得如此地貼近音樂而非文字，Straub的這種風格，除了執拗地延續像MoulletGarrel這些新浪潮好友的「極簡」手法之外，也算是為自己的「藝術」捍衛的極高體現。 　　看來，我還得回頭去看一下Pedro Costa為「我們時代的電影」系列，為這兩夫妻拍的那一集吧，或許，我才真正能向他們更靠近一些（到底是Costa像他們而找他拍，還是Costa本身確實受到兩夫妻的影響，而得到真髓，所以找來對他們最有研究的創作者來拍呢？這我們就不得而知了）？

三个序列在通过本斯特劳布短膜连接在一起;第一序列是从汽车妓女做着自己对德国的夜间街道贸易的长期跟踪拍摄;第二个是分阶段的发挥，由斯特劳布削减到10分钟，并在一个单一的取拍摄;最终序列包括詹姆斯和莉莉丝的婚姻，和莉莉丝的后续的执行她的皮条客，由法斯宾德扮演。

一个关于历史的延续与崩溃、压制的力量和和解的恐惧的故事；忠诚、背叛和复仇。在一场勇敢的电影游戏中，海因里希·勃尔的故事《九点半的台球》被分成裂缝、块状、中断和突然转折，推动着一个德国家族的生活故事向前发展，涵盖了许多代人。

"Veteran experimental filmmakers Danielle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub helmed this unusual adaptation of a novel by Elio Vittorini. Focused on the triumphs and failures of a group of laborers and farm hands who pooled their resources to operate an alternative collective farm after the end of World War II, Operai, Contadini features a cast of 12 actors who read aloud from Vittorini's book for the duration of the film, either reciting from memory or using a clearly visible script. Hardly designed to be a crowd pleaser, Operai, Contadini proved to be controversial among the audiences for its showings at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened as part of the Directors' Fortnight series." ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
"The group makes up a primitive community which seeks to erase not only the distress created by the war but also the hardships of life and hunger, and to protect them from violence, misery and fear. Amid the ruins of this post-war period, the characters build and invent a rapport both in their professional and daily lives between themselves, the sexes, generations, diverse social and geographical origins, and antagonistic political camps.
The group maintains a 'register', a kind of diary, as if it were entering the minutes of an inquiry or a trial." -Steve Grayson
"my favorite Straub-Huillet films are Too Early, Too Late and Operai, contadini (2001), both color landscape films with especially acute senses of place as well as of nature in all its harsh beauty." - Jonathan Rosenbaum

Straub-Huillet’s adaptation of Heinrich Böll’s biting satire Bonn Diary presents the reflections of a reactivated officer who is summon ed to the West German capital by the Ministry of Defense to establish an Academy for Military Memories. Straub considered his film to be an intervention against German rearmament in the Adenauer era: "Machorka-Muff is the story of a rape, the rape of a country on which an army has been imposed, a country which would have been happier without one."
In "Machorka-Muff," Mr. Straub, employing the cold, somewhat expressionistic but always loquacious approach of his other films, comes closest to underlining the almost subliminal irony of his themes. He briefly outlines, through the performance of Colonel Machorka-Muff, a former Nazi who is reinstated in the Adenauer regime, the unchanging thinking of the Nazi and/or the military mind. As the colonel of the title, Dr. Johannes Eckhardt is properly cold and convincing as the believer in the rights of the soldier. Although it is the shortest and earliest of Mr. Straub's films, it is both the most lucid of his works and the most clearly indicative of his potential as an imaginative filmmaker.

A companion piece to the earlier film ‘The Death of Empedocles’, 'Black Sin' is an adaptation of the third version of Friedrich Hölderlin’s play ‘Der Tod Des Empedokles’.

The film is a commemoration of the lost livelihood of the earth, the lost lives of the War and to the work of two of the cinema's greatest artists.@

An extended shot from a car coursing through the streets of Rome in 1972—which is to say, the ancient Republic in ruins—sets the stage for Straub-Huillet’s complex interpretation of Brecht’s unfinished experimental novel The Business Affairs of Mr. Julius Caesar. The work explores history as it has been written by the victors, with their hero worship of tyrannical leaders (whether Caesar or Hitler), and offers an alternate view of history writing as fractured and potentially revolutionary. Caesar’s former slave and former banker are both featured, providing their own differing perspectives on the Emperor’s career in the political, economic, and military life of ancient Rome.

A European traveler from the North, accompanied by Arab guides, is camped in the desert. When night falls, and the Arabs are at a distance, the traveler is accosted by talking jackals. The jackals speak of an age-old hatred for Arabs, whom they associate with uncleanliness. They relate a belief passed down from their ancestors, that a man such as the protagonist would be the one to "end the quarrel which divides the world in two". The jackals attempt to enlist the traveler's assistance in destroying them, offering him old rusted scissors with which to slit the throats of the Arabs.

The Return of the Prodigal Son/Humiliated (Il Ritorno del figlio prodigo/Umiliati), Dirs. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Italy, 2001–03, 64 min., Italian with English subtitles
The diptych The Return of the Prodigal Son/Humiliated (Il Ritorno del figlio prodigo/Umiliati) (2001–03) is a segue from Workers, Peasants (2001) and Straub and Huillet’s third film based on the writings of Elio Vittorini. The film returns to Vittorini’s Marxist novel The Women of Messina (1973) about a community founded after World War II by workers and peasants from different regions of Italy. In the film, the commune is threatened by the pressures of a restructured post-war world, of its laws and politics, and by the forces of history from which they had hoped to protect themselves.

Dolando (2003), was made as a gesture from the filmmakers to their crew. One of the film’s actors, Dolando Bernardini – who also starred in From the Cloud to the Resistance (1979) – sings a capella three verses from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1581).

The Return of the Prodigal Son/Humiliated will be screened in its original 35mm format.

Programme

The Return of the Prodigal Son/Humiliated (Il Ritorno del figlio prodigo/Umiliati), Dirs. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Italy, 2001–03, 64 min., Italian with English subtitles.

Incantati, Dirs. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 2002, Italy/France/Germany, 35mm, 6 min., Italian with English subtitles.

Dolando, Dirs. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 2003, Italy/France/Germany, 7 min., Italian with English subtitles.

1989 film directed by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet