Antiques of Advertising

1988, 15 min, b&w and color, sound, German with English subtitles.

Ads for defunct and foreign products are interspersed with newsreel and documentary footage. The result is a distanced view of the link between desire and commodities. For instance, footage of the Hitler youth with "S" shirts performing a swastika is overlaid with an ad for "Stabil." Products become strange interlopers when they pop up in romantic movies of the Nazi period. Ads in other languages also strip products of desire: Soviet fashion is demonstrated in Cyrillic, phallic chocolates unwrap magically, and a product named "Time" is sucked dry to a Japanese voiceover. A hollow product of unknown use floats in space like the monolith of 2001.