The American Sector, by Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez

7^th House at the Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles Filmforum, and T.A.P.E. present

The American Sector, by Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez

Saturday April 1, 2026, 7:30 pm

At the Philosophical Research Society

Full info:

Director Courtney Stephens will join us in person for a Q&A after the film.

Tickets:

7th House, T.A.P.E., and LA Filmforum co-present Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez’s The American Sector, which follows the filmmakers as they travel through America, documenting sections of the Berlin Wall that have lodged themselves in various American institutions, public spaces, and private dwellings. The film charts the various ways these fragments have become sources of nationalistic pride, personal curiosity, historical record, and, for some, signifiers of political liberation. Through interviews with various characters who own, maintain, and interact with pieces of the wall, the filmmakers offer a window into American culture and the construction of cultural identity.

Through the film, these Cold War relics become a catalyst for exploring how the stories people tell about the imported monoliths become history, at times bonding the past and the present, and other times, for institutions, writing new histories. Just outside of Universal Studios Resort theme park, a young couple is both bemused and excited about the fragment lodged just in front of a Hard Rock Cafe. Elsewhere, at Microsoft Headquarters, a fragment is a reminder of the “free” market’s ability to overcome borders. The documentary complicates the notion that history resides in records, artifacts, and objects, suggesting instead that institutional power often dictates the logic by which fact, fantasy, and history are determined. The fragments signal not only how institutions mythologize American cultural history in order to set nationalism in stone, but also how they become canvases on which viewers project aspirations, curiosities, or dreams.

Intercut between interviews and footage of the pieces of the wall, the American countryside is captured from the passenger seat of a car traveling its highways, all cast in the warm saturation of 16mm celluloid. The wide-open landscape reveals, if anything, the arbitrary logic that constructs and imposes borders of any kind. The fragments of the wall are links to a political history that inspires a more measured consideration of how borders are imposed on the land and its peoples. The film's contemporary resonances encourage audiences to consider how the Berlin Wall has been transformed and the ways in which recent history is inscribed in the national imagination. - Kellen Lowe

Courtney Stephens is the director of four feature films. The American Sector (with Pacho Velez) follows slabs of the Berlin Wall installed around the US, and was named one of the best films of 2021 in The New Yorker. Terra Femme, composed of amateur travel footage shot by women in the early 20th century, was a New York Times critic’s pick and has toured widely as a live performance. John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (with Michael Almereyda) explores the life of neuroscientist and psychedelics pioneer John C. Lilly, and Invention is a hybrid fiction film about an esoteric healing device that premiered at Locarno. Her films have been exhibited at MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican, Fondazione Prada, Jeu de Paume, ICA London, and film festivals including the Berlinale, Rotterdam, Viennale, New Directors/New Films, IDFA, Visions Du Réel, Morelia, and the New York Film Festival. Her work has been released theatrically in the US, UK, and France, and she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and grants from the Sloan Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Art.  She has co-curated the miniature cinema Veggie Cloud since 2014, and organized film programs for The Getty, Museum of the Moving Image, Flaherty NYC, and Human Resources. Her writing has appeared in Film Comment, BOMB, Filmmaker, The New Inquiry, and Cabinet.