CES: "The Passages of Walter Benjamin": A New Documentary Film on the Arcades Project

Date: 

Wednesday, November 19, 2014, 4:15pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

Busch Hall, Lower Level Conference Room
The Paris Arcades, known as Passages in French, were a principal focus of renowned literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin. From 1927-1940 he worked on his study: "My book, Paris Arcades, is the theater of all my struggles and all my ideas." Benjamin's Arcades Project is the focus of this one hour documentary, set in the context of his life and times.

Sponsors: Harvard Center for Jewish Studies, William Landau Lecture and Publication Fund; Jews in Modern Europe; The Worship and Study Minyan, Harvard Hillel; Harvard Colloquium for Intellectual History; German Consulate General Boston; Goethe-Institut Boston; Contemporary Europe

The film includes documents, manuscripts and letters from the Benjamin archives, albums of prints and photographs at the Bibliothèque Nationale, interviews with leading Benjamin scholars, and archival film of Paris and Berlin in the 1920s and '30s. The filmmaker, Judith Wechsler, NEH Professor Emerita of Art History at Tufts University, will present the New England premiere of her new documentary.

Contact: Alex Sagan, alex@sagan.org