In the first film, Eric Faden tries to draw a connection between visual cinema, railroads, and their ability to transport people to a different place or see things from a different perspective. He begins by giving three examples of movies that place the railroad at the center of the character's ability to see and process the world around them. Not only are they transported to a different location, but they are also able to view the world in a new and unique manner by their experience with the railroad. Movies too, not only enable us to see the world through a different perspective, but also comment on our position within that world. Faden uses the recreation of a classical movie style to illustrate the perspective of a young girl experiencing one of the first movies, and shows how the use of the railroad ties into the creation of a motion picture. He guides us through a girl's adventure by railroad, into the city, where she watches a documentary about the correlation between cinema and trains in what seems to be an old movie titled "The Day Trip." During the movie, he says that the creation of the railroad, made possible the acceptance of visual cinema by the masses, because just as video "the steam engine, that powerful stage manager throws the switches...and then shifts the view point every moment," - Benjamin Gastineau, and requires a new understanding of perspective. He punctuates his point at the end of the video, by revealing that the depiction of an old film was just that. Faden had transported his audience into a new time and space to make the audience more able to understand the connection between the genesis of cinema with the cultural impact of the railroad.
The second film, This Unfamiliar Place, similarly parallels its form with function. The author is trying to make sense of, and investigate the details of her father's dark past in the concentration camp in Warsaw, Poland during WWII. The film takes the form of a documentary, that attempts to find the answers to her questions regarding her father's mysterious past. However, although this film is factual, drawing from her own perception and her father's words to draw conclusions, the audience is left just as confused about the man's experience in the concentration camp. She uses short and sporadic visual clips that are hard to interpret, and left me unclear about their connection to the discovery of meaning for the author. She tries to draw parallels between her own life, and the unknown story of her father, but nothing seems to satisfy the questions that linger in her brain and the minds of the audience.
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