Signal – Germany on the Air

The past is never delineated through Gehr’s film, an unorthodox “city symphony” composed of largely static compositions of West Berlin streets. His refusal to dissertate an active through-line in the sights and sounds opens up a world in which we can identify, through metrical editing and angular snapshots of a city space, universal signifiers coursing through every frame. Combined with an embedded knowledge of the area’s loaded past and Gehr’s recorded, crackling radio broadcasts laid over the images, Signal – Germany on the Air (1985) is a challenging personal work.