Daniel Eisenberg's poetic essay film is both a record of his travels in Germany after the Wall has fallen and an inquiry into the historical records he finds there-fictional and military films, documents and diaries, and also the landscape itself, buildings and sites. Structured around the categories of "Presences," "Absences," and "Prospects," the film includes a recurring image which links its concerns to the notorious angel of history who looks at the past and sees not a chain of events, but a catastrophe, wreckage. While Persistence meditates on the ruins of Germany, it also questions the act of observation. From an opening remark on the disinterest passersby have for the site the filmmaker is viewing, to "Rules of the Dispassionate Observation" and notations "From the Archive of Everyday Observations," Eisenberg builds distinctions between the observations of the state, the individual, the artist. As observers of the film, we must sort out past and present, his own and others' observations, the significance of visual change, and thus experience the complexity of making "sense" of history, particularly of enormous catastrophes.-Kathy Geritz