Cooperation of Parts1987

The images for COOPERATION OF PARTS were shot in Europe in 1983. The film begins at a train station in Calais, France and ends on a street in Radom, Poland. In between are images of Paris, Munich, Dachau, Berlin, Warsaw and Auschwitz/Birkenau. Unlike most films that deal with the Holocaust, COOPERATION OF PARTS takes place firmly in the present and does not attempt to recapitulate history. Using lists, descriptions of photographs, a catalog of proverbs, images of streets, trains, ruins and riots, the film explores the territory of the recent past with a second generation perspective, distanced through time and reflection. With the visual field as a touchstone for a complex set of narrative associations, the film spins a tight web of memory, history, and experience. It is within this web that the film finds its wider significance: as a model for how daily life, history, first hand and second hand experience bind, through purpose or chance, to form identity itself.