Walter Benjamin was a leading German Jewish cultural historian. His Arcades Project, a monumental study of nineteenth century Paris, is set in the context of his life and times. His friendships with Brecht, Scholem, Arendt and Adorno and his romances are evoked drawing are evoked. Drawing on correspondence and quotations from 'The Arcades Project,' the film is a visual evocation of Benjamin's great incomplete study. The film includes photographs, documents, letters and manuscripts from the Benjamin archives in Berlin and Jerusalem, prints and photographs from the Bibliotheque national in Paris, interviews with leading Benjamin scholars and archival film of Paris and Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s. His suicide in 1940, escaping the Nazis, after crossing the Pyrenees is evoked.

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The Passages of Walter Benjamin from Benjamin Reichman on Vimeo.