Polish avant-garde movie finally sees light of day

The film was made through the fusion of an innovative range of techniques, such as collages, photograms and prints made by laying objects on photographic paper and exposing it to light. Press materials

In this episode of The Debrief, we find out more about a Polish film dating from the 1930s which has just been unearthed at the German Bundesarchiv in Berlin.


A Polish avant-garde film dating from before World War II has been found in the German federal archives. The movie, called ‘Europa’, was made by surrealists Stefan and Franciszka Themerson and is a critique of the rise of Nazism in Germany at the beginning of the 1930s.

During the war the film was thought to have been destroyed, but one copy has been unearthed in Berlin and is to get its world premier at the London Film Festival later this month.

Host John Beauchamp talks to Wojciech Kozłowski, Director of the Pilecki Institute, which was instrumental behind the film’s unearthing.

In this week’s review:

· Poland sends Egypt over 100,000 doses of Astra Zeneca vaccine

· Majority of Poles want shopping Sundays back – poll

· New centre dedicated to Polish Enigma codebreakers opens in Poznań

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