Streetscapes [Dialogue]

Streetscapes – Kapitel III / Photographie und jenseits – Teil 26: The shell constructions of the Uruguayan master builder Eliado Dieste resemble gigantic brain shells and provide a framework for the location and theme of the film: Trauma and architecture. There are streets, paths, highways, alleys, boulevards and promenades. And there are life paths, crossroads and dead ends. Two men sit on the shady gallery of a brick building somewhere in Montevideo. They are engrossed in a marathon of conversation that continues throughout the film. The younger of the two is an analyst, the older man is his analyst. Their nationalities are unclear, they speak a simple, internationally understandable English. They talk about a childhood among the ruins and the traumatized people of Germany shortly after the Second World War, about fleeing, about an obsessive preoccupation with architecture and about manic writing. And they talk about working with the film camera, which is a technical instrument for the young analyst, but a lifeline for the old director.