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A sense of perverted nostalgia haunts over the cinematic narratives gathered in a polylogue of the 5th chapter of the Moving Image Department. After having phantasized a moving image as a vehicle of a collective voice, the following sequence concentrates on the economies of time - the transformative power, the metamorphosis, the image’s alchemic virtues, last but not least - an image as a passage, a journey, a state between. Homecoming and transitoriness are thematised in a cinematic oeuvre od Adrian Paci (1969, Albania). His “Per Speculum” (2006) is a close-up portrait of humanity in suspense between hope and transcience, submerged in a trance of expectation, daydreaming a better future. The image’s stilness strengthens the anxiety of a fallen representation. The image allegorically blinds the spectators, producing an after image, the spectator’s own image. The scultural installation “Shadow” (2016) by Adam vačkář (1979, Czech Republic) might refer to Paci’s quasi-biblical tree of “Per Speculum”. His post-human forest is nature in decline, an apocalyptic paradise of an aborted future, a desperate act of protection. Vačkář’s gestural cinematic work narrates the passing of time, both subjective and collective, towards dissapearance and removal. Here, like in the case of all other works presented in the 5th chapter of the Moving Image Department, a personal memory is politicized through the dust of universal history.