10/06/2019

Waiting for Il Cinema Ritrovato: “We Are the Natives of Trizonia”

Following the capitulation on 8th May 1945, Germany became an occupied territory devoid of proper nationhood, and it needed a future. It soon became clear that there would be two possible tomorrows: the Soviet-occupied zone was developed in one political direction, the US-American, British and French ones in another. From 1945 to 1948 the latter slowly fused into an administrative unity called the Trizone, which became the basis for the Federal Republic of Germany.We Are the Natives of Trizonia (named after a Cologne carnival song from the same period) will look at this fragile construct’s film production – which in 1956, the magazine “Das Schönste” retrospectively called “the avant-garde days of post-war German cinema.” An apt description, for it would take a long time until films as formally inventive, daring, hard and unflinching as the films presented here were made in the FRG.
Curated by Olaf Möller

More information here.