Flâneur III: Benjamin's Shadow

The German Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin, who from 1927 until his tragic suicide in 1940 devoted himself to a study about Paris in the French Bibliothèque Nationale, saw Paris as a city in which antiquity merges with modernity. For example, in his unfinished philosophical text on Paris, Benjamin compares the covered shopping arcades to Hades, the underworld in Greek mythology; a world without windows, a world of illusions, dreams and fantasies, the primeval landscape of consumption. According to Benjamin, there is no modern experience in which history does not resound. And when ages are dreaming, Benjamin asserts, they quote the past. The nineteenth century dreams of the ancient classics. In Flâneur III, the Swedish director Skjödt Jensen follows Benjamin’s shadow through his beloved, vivacious Paris in a labyrinthine collage of images and words, which is inspired by the form of Benjamin’s philosophical work. Just as Benjamin digs up excerpts from the ‘infinite’ Bibliothèque Nationale, combines them in his philosophy and personally interprets them, the filmmaker intermingles black-and-white images of Paris, Benjamin’s thoughts and thoughts by Benjamin adherents. The film is an abstract, veiled stroll through philosophy and city, and this, too, fits the German philosopher’s spirit. For Benjamin, flâner – roaming the urban landscape in a dreamy mood, without fixed attention – is an allegory of the condition humaine in the modern age. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)