Distant Voices

Ferne Stimmen : distant voices. That of Hannah Arendt, a poem of whose, written in honour of Walter Benjamin in 1942, is read in voice-over as we see images of walls and deserted streets in an abandoned village: Oradour-sur-Glane. That of Ulrike Meinhof, speaking of women’s position with regards to political commitment, or the survival of fascism in post-war Germany, as we see a woman in a cell akin to that of the political activist. Two german women, both of whom fought against nazism and its aftermath; two evocations of state violence and the struggles it engenders; two decentred frames that cover each other in turn, contaminate and pollinate one another in a palimpsest of eras of resistance.