Perhaps Farocki’s best-known work, this crucial film-essay focuses on aerial photographs of Auschwitz taken during World War II by British pilots. Those who studied the photos, however, took no notice of the camp since they were interested only in nearby bombing targets. That haunting historical detail acts as the allegorical center for an austere reflection on the use of images as surveillance and as instruments of control.

Farocki uses surveillance video and computer graphics to trace the similarity between the prison, the factory and the supermarket- the convict, the worker and the shopper are all watched, their movements deciphered in the interest of greater control. The film ultimately focuses on the investigation at California’s notorious Corcoran prison, where guards shot and killed unarmed inmates in a series of incidents in the 1990s, the ghastly events captured on camera.