Four Parts of a Folding Screen

Based on documents found in Berlin archives, Four Parts of a Folding Screen explores exclusion, statelessness and the legalised theft and sale of everyday family possessions by the National Socialist regime. A voice, enigmatic and sometimes uncertain, foretells, relates and recalls the routine processes of injustice and their legacy: the creation of a diaspora of household objects, scattered over buildings that no longer exist. As the camera probes the secrets of ordinary spaces, streets and buildings around the city of Berlin, semblances of a person and a history begin to emerge and coalesce.

Working somewhere in the space between documentary and fiction, Kennedy & Wiblin let the filmmaking process itself also enter the narrative. An elderly woman asks the filmmakers: "Are you working for Google Earth?", and tells of seeing the whole of Frankfurter Allee destroyed in a single night by aerial bombing – such poignant juxtapositions of past and present spark throughout the film.