Tracking down various segments of the Berlin Wall scattered all over the US, this eccentric yet down-to-earth documentary from Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez traces how a historic artefact can mutate and splinter into myriad meanings. Transformed by their surroundings as well as the film-makers’ gaze, these concrete slabs are more than a symbol of the cold war; they have come to represent something quintessentially American.
From the midwest to California, state department halls to roadside restaurants, chunks of the wall can be found in the most unlikely of places. Most often positioned as a commemoration of history – and that loaded concept of “freedom” – the fragments are occasionally entirely untethered from their context, re-erected decoratively inside a Microsoft office or in the home of a private collector.
Using 16mm film stock, the documentary has the feel of William Eggleston’s studies of mundane Americana. As the camera lingers on ordinary spaces such as a hotel lobby, the presence of a section of the wall is simultaneously bizarre and unremarkable. After all, there is nothing more American than the commodification of history.
In addition to its offbeat locations, this cinematic road trip offers the film-makers’ interactions with those who live or work around the edifices. One particularly revelatory sequence centres on a phone call between Stephens and the CIA; while denying the crew permission to film inside their headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the CIA representative segues unexpectedly into a candid suggestion that the end of the cold war left the organisation in existential limbo. Such conversations bring a human unpredictability to the solemn wreckage of history.
• The American Sector is available from 30 June on True Story.
