Luftgeister begins with a repeated fragment of an old black-and-white Hollywood movie, in which a submarine gunner, gleefully firing torpedoes at an enemy target, is revealed to be actor Ronald Reagan. In this opening sequence, vom Bruch makes explicit the collision of collective memory and mass media images, presenting history as mediated by cinema and television representations. In the subsequent sequence, established with a static shot of a Southern California palm tree and sky, vom Bruch jumps vertically into the frame, his face partially visible for a brief moment before he falls out of sight again. This minimal action, which introduces subjectivity and employs a contrasting strategy of fragmentation, is repeated over and over.