Poster for ‘Outskirts’ (USSR 1933, dir. Boris Barnet) by Izrail Bograd (1899-1938), Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Weekly screenings on Tuesdays, Semester One, 2016/17
Legacies of War present eleven screenings of lesser known, difficult to access or non-Anglophone films about World War One, produced over the course of the last 100 years.
The series includes feature films and essayistic/documentary work by filmmakers of different backgrounds and persuasions. Some productions reach beyond the events and experiences of 1914-18.
Films will be introduced briefly before each screening. Non-English language films are shown in the original; whether subtitles are available is stated below.
All screenings at 6pm, Room G.04
School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies
(University Road, campus map 38)
You are welcome to bring a drink or snack.
Western Front Revisited
Three anti-war feature films from the early sound period, set on the Western Front, which are often referred to but rarely seen:
Tuesday, 4 October 2016: Westfront 1918 (88 min, Germany 1930, dir. Georg Wilhelm Pabst – German, no English subtitles)
Tuesday, 11 October 2016: Les croix de bois/Wooden Crosses (113 min, France 1932, dir. Raymond Bernard, French with English subtitles)
Tuesday, 18 October 2016: Niemandsland/Hell on Earth (Germany 1931, dir. Victor Travis, English/multilingual, c. 70 min [slightly compromised version, not the original length]).
Tuesday, 25 October 2016: How I Filmed the War (75 min, Canada 2010, dir. Yuval Sagiv).
Experimental documentary deconstructing the British documentary film Battle of the Somme (1916), reflecting on one of its cameramen, the challenges of filming war and the film’s reception.
Soviet Perspectives
Tuesday, 1 November 2016: Outskirts (99 min, USSR 1933, dir. Boris Barnet, Russian with English subtitles)
A small village on the Russo-German border forms a microcosm of the great changes Russia undergoes during the course of the First World War.
Tuesday, 8 November 2016: Arsenal (90 min, USSR 1928, dir. Alexander Dovshenko, Russian intertitles with English subtitles)
Set in the aftermath of WW1, a demobbed soldier returns to Kiev which is celebrating Ukraine’s freedom. Disenchanted, he starts to agitate for the soviet system and things come to a head when Bolshevik troops defend their city against the advancing White Army.
German Discontinuities
Tuesday, 15 November 2016: Nerven/Nerves (110 min, Germany 1919, dir. Robert Reiner, German intertitles and English subtitles)
Cinematic attempt to capture the ‘nervous epidemic’ caused by war and misery which ‘drives people mad’, filmed on location in Munich in 1919. Precursor of German expressionist cinema of the 1920s.
Tuesday, 22 November 2016: Morgenrot (81 min, Germany 1933, dir. Gustav Ucicky, in German, no subtitles)
Transitional UFA film about submarine warfare, made in the Weimar Republic and first screened only days after the National Socialists came to power.
Tuesday, 29 November 2016: Krieg ist das Ende aller Pläne (Germany 1990-2005, dir. Alexander Kluge, c. 2 hours in total, German with English subtitles).
A selection of conceptual interviews and short films about war, warfare and Germany’s war history.
War and Empires
6 December 2016: La victoire en chantant/Black and White in Colour (95 min, Ivory Coast/France/West Germany 1976 [not the 1977 re-issue], dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud, French, no English subtitles)
The film is set in French Equatorial Africa in 1915 where the news of war in Europe arrives belatedly. Through satire and black humour, the film exposes the injustices, absurdities and violence of colonialism.
13 December 2016: The Halfmoon Files (87 min, Germany 2007, dir. Philip Scheffner, German with English subtitles)
Essayistic exploration of an Indian/British colonial prisoner-of-war who is held at the ‘Halfmoon Camp’ Wünsdorf near Berlin during WWI and becomes the subject of German anthropological research.
Dr Claudia Sternberg (FAHACS)
c.sternberg@leeds.ac.uk