June 3, 1986
Werner Schroeter (7 April 1945 – 12 April 2010) was a German film director, screenwriter, and opera director known for his stylistic excess. He was cited by Rainer Werner Fassbinder as an influence both on his own work and on German cinema at large.
When Schroeter’s film The Death of Maria Malibran was released in 1972, Michel Foucault wrote a text titled “The Nondisciplinary Camera Versus Sade,” which Schroeter thought was the most accurate analysis of his work of the period. At the time, Foucault and Schroeter did not know each other. In 1981, the French writer Gérard Courant proposed to Schroeter to write a book on his work; Schroeter readily agreed, but asked if Courant could arrange a meeting with Foucault. Courant did so, and a conversation between Schroeter, Foucault, and Courant took place in early December 1981.
English translations of Foucault’s 1972 article and the 1981 conversation between Schroeter and Foucault can be found in Michel Foucault, Patrice Manigler, and Dork Zabunyan, Foucault at the Movies, ed. and trans Clare O’Farrell (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).
Deleuze discusses Foucault’s conversation with Schroeter in his seminar of 3 June 1986.
March 8, 1983