Departure On Arrival1996

In this film I attempt to communicate the feeling of evaporation, of disappearing and slipping away of the fragile material which is called time. Barbara Meter's Departure on Arrival draws the viewer into a world which is both historically specific and powerfully emotive. The film gives a strong sense of a European life, possibly though not necessarily Jewish, lived in the middle and latter parts of the 20th century, with references further back: to Imperial Germany and to the succeeding inter-war period. The film beguiles the viewer with black and white images and fragments of sound from a wide variety of sources: footage from train stations and domestic interiors, old phtographs, whirling masses of grain, the imprint of what looks like fur on the surface of the film, and glimpses of text; an indistinguishable moment of conversation, the sound of footsteps, snatches from popular music of Eastern Europe and from works in the Western classical tradition.