In times like these, it is worth looking back at the past. This programme explores cinematic approaches to authoritarian regimes and fascism from various perspectives: from a portrait of a proud man in uniform to a film that once sent Goebbels into a rage. Images have always served as tools for writing history. It remains important to take a second look.

Schichlegruber Doing the Lambeth Walk
Charles A. Ridley / United Kingdom 1942 / 2'18" / black & white / no dialogue / Exp
Charles A. Ridley, an employee of the UK Ministry of Information, used a short clip from Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film «Triumph of the Will» to create an apt parody of National Socialism through editing. In 1942, these three minutes sent Goebbels into a rage.

Hell Unlimited
Helen Biggar/Norman McLaren / United Kingdom 1936 / 14'25" / black & white / no dialogue / Ani/Exp
Norman McLaren co-directed this film with a pacifist theme while living in London. Marionettes, animated sequences, maps, and real footage come together in «Hell Unlimited», which was made to be used by organizations working for peace.

20/68 Schatzi
Kurt Kren / Austria 1968 / 2'29" / black & white / no dialogue / Exp
The historicity of the still image contains a political dimension. In «20/68 Schatzi», Kren films a photograph showing an SS officer standing in a square littered with corpses. The positive and negative are superimposed, so that at first only abstract, blurred areas are visible, from which the image emerges gradually. Kren reenacts a process of realization through the gradual unveiling of an unbearable fact, revealing the image as an inscription of reality. The image then disintegrates once more into its positive and negative components, making it clear that it is «merely» a photograph, which can no longer do justice to the event depicted. Through the animation of the photograph, Kren moves from seeing to thinking.

Porträt einer Bewährung
Alexander Kluge / Germany 1964 / 11'50" / black & white / German / Doc
A former police officer, who served loyally under six different German governments, laments the fact that he was forced into early retirement due to a disagreement with a superior.

Ein drittes Reich
Alfred Kaiser / Austria 1975 / 27'17" / German / Doc
«A Third Reich» is a compilation film made with archival footage from the 1930s and 40s, which paints a picture of a country under totalitarian rule. Drawing on these excerpts produced by the regime, Alfred Kaiser's vivid treatment analyzes the phrasing and rhetoric of Nazi propaganda.

Europa
Franciszka Themerson/Stefan Themerson / Poland 1931 / 12' / black & white / Polish / Doc/Exp
Based on Anatol Stern’s modernist poem of the same name and a remarkably prescient outcry against the rise of fascism in Europe, «Europa» employs a remarkable range of techniques to convey the horror and moral decline experienced by the artists in Poland in the years before the Second World War.

Black and White
Klub Zwei / Austria/United Kingdom 2003 / 5' / black & white / German / Exp/Doc
«Black and White» deals with the meaning of documentary photos in memorializing the Holocaust. Which roles do these images play? How were they shown in 1945? In which contexts are they placed today? And what is the responsibility of the viewers when looking at these images? The tackles these questions through editing. The video juxtaposes an interview with Rosemarie Nief, head of the photo archive of the Wiener Holocaust Library in London with passages from a text by Clément Chéroux from the book «Mémoire des Camps» published in Paris.