The poet vanishes and only his voice remains. He is replaced, as Walters describes it, by a "visual realization" of the poem's themes of spies, secret codes and lurking violence.
The criminalist Hannes Bergemann tries to blackmail the city where he spent his youth. After many years returning to the familiar places of his childhood, he hopes to meet again his old friends, especially Fred, Helmuth and Richard, with whom he had a close childhood friendship.
While ill and experiencing some difficulty in completing the editing of this film, Brakhage was reading the Marguerite Young novel, "Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.
"Reverse Television" was created in the mid-1980's by video artist Bill Viola. The 30-second portraits were about portraiture and the idea of a person staring at the viewer (as the viewer stares at the TV screen).