Kitchener-Berlin

Part One: “A Measured Dance” 17 min. Part Two: “Prologue” and “Veiled Flight” 17 min. NOTE: Part One can be screened on its own. “Hoffman juxtaposes his home town, the Canadian city of Kitchener (formerly called Berlin), with its European namesake of the World War II era. The hyphen in the title suggests both severance from the past and connections to it. The history of the area underpins the film, but refuses to bind it or restrict it from free association. Hoffman assembles a wide range of visual materials including home movies, television, news footage, and archival film, as well as his own characteristically enticing images, to build complex layers of superimpositions analogous to the impressions of memory. The film’s opening segment ‘A Measured Dance’ is fluid and seductive, with deliberate and rhythmic camera movement and complex editing. Its second part, ‘Veiled Flight’ (introduced with an astounding ‘Prologue’ drawn from archival sources), is more enigmatic, turning inward with the visual metaphor of underground exploration, and suggests the extent to which film-makers are engaged in the work of making ghosts of the past for the future.” – Blaine Allan