Highway 40 West Backdrop Blur
Highway 40 West Poster

Highway 40 West

"Highway 40 West" (1980/81) is the first of a series of documentaries by Hartmut Bitomsky (born 1942 in Bremen) which brought him international fame. Each of these films is dedicated to both, a specific and title-giving object and its historical-critical analysis. Such as in "Highway 40 West": For a time span of 169 minutes, the film shows Bitomsky’s emblematic US-road trip with a rented car on the eponymous road number 40, crossing the country from East to West. From early travel routes of the "Native Americans" to the trails of early colonizers, this street is loaded with American history - and with the present ruins of the American dream, which Bitomsky indulgingly captures on film. He himself appears as actor/author, conducting innumerable interviews, shooting the landscape, the diners and hotels - and his sonorous narrator’s voice reviews what is seen, and tries to understand and make it understandable.

Top Cast

Overview

"Highway 40 West" (1980/81) is the first of a series of documentaries by Hartmut Bitomsky (born 1942 in Bremen) which brought him international fame. Each of these films is dedicated to both, a specific and title-giving object and its historical-critical analysis. Such as in "Highway 40 West": For a time span of 169 minutes, the film shows Bitomsky’s emblematic US-road trip with a rented car on the eponymous road number 40, crossing the country from East to West. From early travel routes of the "Native Americans" to the trails of early colonizers, this street is loaded with American history - and with the present ruins of the American dream, which Bitomsky indulgingly captures on film. He himself appears as actor/author, conducting innumerable interviews, shooting the landscape, the diners and hotels - and his sonorous narrator’s voice reviews what is seen, and tries to understand and make it understandable.

Rating

9.0 / 10
1 Reviews
0 Popular

Recommendations

We Live in Public

In 1999, Internet entrepreneur Josh Harris recruits dozens of young men and women who agree to live in underground apartments for weeks at a time while their every movement is broadcast online. Soon, Harris and his girlfriend embark on their own subterranean adventure, with cameras streaming live footage of their meals, arguments, bedroom activities, and bathroom habits. This documentary explores the role of technology in our lives, as it charts the fragile nature of dot-com economy.

We Live in Public

6.9 2009
Night Will Fall

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

Night Will Fall

7.6 2014