Farocki launched his career with this angry and arresting dissection of the role of the scientists, engineers and administrators at Dow Chemical who perfected the industrial manufacture of napalm. Inextinguishable Fire is now regarded as a signature work by Farocki, its iconic status confirmed by its shot-for-shot recreation in Jill Godmilow’s What Farocki Taught (1998). The film’s unsettling power remains undiminished and potent.

This wide-ranging film essay continues Farocki’s concern for the links between technology and warfare, tracing the ways that engineering advances have brought increasing automation and mechanization to physical labor and warfare, formerly the exclusive province of the body. A key sequence involving the dubbing of a porn film implies that this mechanization extends to another bodily province-sexuality itself. As You See lays the foundation for Farocki’s later essay films to come by bringing together little-known fragments of history with sharp interviews and extended observational sequences.