Born in Czechoslovakia in 1928, at a very young age Haro Senft was devoted to painting, his first passion. In 1954 he created his production company, Boheme Film that would become Haro Senft Filmproduktion two years later. At the end of the 1950’s with other film directors like Edgar Reitz and Alexander Kluge, Haro Senft set himself up  as the founder of the New German Film Industry, a film industry without conventions and without commercial constraints.

In the 50’s, competition from television and a drop in cinema attendance incited the German government to act.  It thus introduced the German Film Prize (Deutscher Filmpreis), the highest distinction for national cinema, to re-boost German production and encourage new film directors to create.  In 1964, the year of its screening, Auto Auto received the Prize for the Best Short Film, which reinforced Haro Senft’s desire to show a new form of cinema, one off the beaten track.

Just like Die Brücke, Auto Auto is a fierce criticism of modernity and more particularly of the car.  The car is no longer an invention to serve man but quite the opposite; it’s the life of each that is now subject to this object of mass consumption. Throughout the film, the dialogues have been replaced by engine noises and screeching tyres.  The only words you hear are said by a child whose first babble is “Auto Auto”.

Here Haro Senft again attempts to get his message across, that of an artist in conflict with the modern world, a world that killed art and feelings sacrificed for the coldness of machines and a growing individualism.