What remains? Lives leave behind traces; so does the passage of time. Thomas Heise’s Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit examines how the one relates to the other. Using documents from his personal archive – letters, photographs, school essays, diary entries – read by Heise himself in voiceover and shown on screen, he traces out the story of four generations of his family in Vienna, Dresden and (East) Berlin. We see black and white images of the places and landscapes mentioned in the correspondence as they look today, which bear the marks of time: the labour camp in Zerbst, the former National People’s Army barracks, a university auditorium, terraced houses in Mainz. There are also cracks in the earth, mounds, open strata and railway stations, trains and tracks again and again. First loves, fathers, mothers, sons and brothers, the deportation of the Viennese Jews, war dead in Dresden, art and literature, East German socialism and staying respectable – using fragments from the repository of personal experience, meticulously chosen and pieced together with gaps, Heise tells nothing less than the story of Germany in the 20th century. A great film, and one that will remain.
