Reiterative Reading: Harun Farocki's Approach to the Footage from Westerbork Transit Camp

Harun Farocki's silent film Respite (2007) presents footage from the Nazi camp at Westerbork that was commissioned by the camp's commander and filmed by its inmates. Using varying aesthetic strategies, including the insertion of on-screen commentary and the reuse of images while altering that commentary, Farocki investigates the possibilities and limitations of reading pictorial sources from Nazi concentration camps. The article explores the filmmaker's method of “reiterative reading” and comments on the implications that follow from his and other contemporary appropriations of archival material.