The traces of history don’t just appear, they have to be searched for. Ute Adamczewski carries out a cinematic site visit to Saxony, once a stronghold for the workers’ movement, where a large number of so-called “wild camps” were set up accordingly in repurposed town houses, sports halls, barracks, and factory premises after the Nazis came to power in 1933. Today hardly anything still references this, as the buildings’ everyday usage has come to dominate how they are seen. ZUSTAND UND GELAENDE (Germany 2019) shows images of harmless-looking houses, streets, and towns, which are accompanied by a woman speaking in voiceover, reading out files and testimonies linked to those imprisoned during the Nazi era. Further text passages comes from East Germany and present-day Germany, leading further into the terrain of the politics of history and memory culture and revealing the historical and contemporary strata that are, now visible, inscribed into the area. (bik, Arsenal Kino)

Tom Dorow