One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin (1993)

Walter Benjamin is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, yet his work is relatively unknown to many. Benjamin, who died escaping the Gestapo in 1940, has been increasingly recognized by artists and thinkers the world over. Born into a wealthy Jewish family, Benjamin was a well-known writer and broadcaster in pre-Hitler Germany before he was forced into exile in 1933 when he fled to Paris.
One Way Street is both an exposition of Benjamin’s ideas and a search for Benjamin the man in locations as diverse as the academics of Moscow, the bookstores of New York, Parisienne arcades and the cemetery in a Spanish costal village that has become a place of pilgrimage for Benjamin devotees. Scholars discuss the impact of Benjamin’s work, and the combination of interviews, stylized reconstruction and archival film results in a dynamic portrait of one of the 20th century’s most influential thinkers.