This collection of essays offers a critical assessment of Labour in a
Single Shot, a groundbreaking documentary video workshop. From 2011 to
2014, curator Antje Ehmann and film- and video-maker Harun Farocki
produced an art project of truly global proportions. They travelled to
fifteen cities around the world to conduct workshops inspired by cinema
history's first film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, shot in 1895
by the Lumière brothers in France. While the workshop videos are in
colour and the camera was not required to remain static, Ehmann and
Farocki's students were tasked with honouring the original Lumière
film's basic parameters of theme and style. The fascinating result is a
collection of more than 550 short videos that have appeared in
international exhibitions and on an open-access website, offering the
widest possible audience the opportunity to ponder contemporary labour
in multiple contexts around the world.