A Second Quarter is decidedly European; the “place” (Berlin) is the catalyst for the “action” (the work). The works recited in the film are concerned with barriers and borders, physical and geophysical phenomena. The characters also translate, count, and recite the alphabet. They build a narrative that is not a story to be followed dogmatically but rather a pattern from which to extract one’s version of what is seen. The scenes are set in an old bourgeois apartment, in an office near the West Berlin train station, and at the ruins of the Anhalter Bahnhof and its vicinity, with the Berlin Wall in the background.
