The American Sector: Film Review | Berlin 2020

Over a three-year period, filmmakers Courtney Stephens, making her first feature-length documentary, and Pacho Velez (Manakamana, The Reagan Show) visited more than 60 of the stateside artifacts. Their film begins as a mysterious travelogue, inviting us to consider the slabs in their varied settings — public parks and private property, museums and roadsides, universities and government offices. Sometimes the new owner has provided curatorial context; sometimes the monolith seems transplanted from an unknown world (2001: A Space Odyssey might come to mind, or maybe the cover of Who's Next).