This film essay by Adam Kossoff mixes images from The Paris Exposition of 1937 with literary excerpts from works by Walter Benjamin and British filmmaker Humphrey Jennings. Did they ever meet?
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS: Dok Leipzig
Through The Bloody Mists Of Time. The Meeting of Jennings and Benjamin
While British filmmaker Humphrey Jennings died 70 years ago today, 80 years ago, on 26 September, the German Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin died. They both died tragically on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
On the eve of World War II, did Jennings make a film about the 1937 Paris Exposition? Benjamin seems to think so. Jennings, British filmmaker and Surrealist, and Benjamin, Marxist philosopher, were both in Paris in 1937, although their paths didn’t cross. But some years later they both meet on a cloud in the sky.