Thursday 7 October 2021

Song for... Europa (1931/2). BFI London Film Festival 2021, Opening Night

Franciszka Themerson in Europa

we, who drag along the streets

our queue of sunken bellies

our powerless fists

stuffing our pockets

we shall, lose, lose, lose… as always

 

Taking a mid-week break from the digital Pordenone for and actual trip to the actual, in the flesh, first night of the BFI London Film Festival and the screening of a film not seen since 1933; a World Premier of its restored version no less, followed by a second screening. Europa was the first film made by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, two radical minded Polish artists who believed in the political importance of art at a time of confusion.


This was an extraordinary session, not just in terms of the content but also the context and the line up of speakers, led by William Fowler, BFI National Archive Curator, who advised us that this was – apart from everything else – the first screening of this year’s festival (although Idris Elba missed it being otherwise occupied at the Royal Festival Hall) and as such a fine example of collaborative restoration and historical import, it deserved to be.


Jasia Reichardt shows pages from the Themersons scrap book


After Will’s introduction we saw Jasia Reichardt, a renowned Polish film historian and programmer – with a CV to make your mind melt - who first met the Themersons as a child when she was more impressed with their cats than anything else. She stayed friendly with the couple throughout their lives, all three much travelled from home after the rise of Nazi Germany. After the couple died in 1988, she has curated their collection and showed us elements of a precious scrap book they kept illustrating not only their method and purpose – including some lost films – but also reviews and contemporary reaction.


She’s already published a 6KG collection of their works and one hopes this extraordinary diary sees the light of day too. She started off quoting President Macron’s warning about the rise of right wing thought in Europe and couldn’t think of a better time for her friends’ film to be restored.


The Nazis took all five of the Themerson’s films in 1940 and the family had always expected them all lost for good and yet, as another presenter, Anne Webber, Co-Chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, pointed out, Hitler’s regime suppressed a lot but actually destroyed very little of what they stole. This meant there was always a chance that films like this can show up, lost, in this case in Nazi and then East German archives before the Themerson’s niece and heir Jasia Reichardt learned from Poland’s Pilecki Institute that a copy might be in Germany’s Bundesarchiv in 2019.


Our replica of Mieczysław Szczuka and Teresa Żarnower's 1929 booklet


From then on there has been an international effort to restore the film and to even add music from Lodewijk Muns who’s pre-recorded introduction explained his approach to the composition, all of which was, erm, music to the ears of silent film aficionados. He aimed to compliment the visuals using the instrumentation and style of the period and not to create his own narrative distractions for source material of tremendous historical significance but which also does not have anything like a typical narrative to riff with or indeed off. He succeeds but, even after two viewings on the night, this is a film which requires further study.


So important was the lost film considered that two attempts were made to reconstruct it in the eighties, firstly Europa Reconstruction (1983/4) by the Themersons and then Europa II directed by Piotr Zarebski in 1988. Both were screened tonight but, for obvious reasons, didn’t compare with the emotional hit of the first film.


Europa (1931) (c) Themerson Estate


Europa was based on a poem from Anatol Stern publishing in Reflektor magazine in 1925, it was then published as a book in 1929 designed by two avant-garde artists Mieczysław Szczuka and Teresa Żarnower and then used as a handout with the first screenings of the film in 1932 and again a replica was given to all attendees of tonight’s event.


They feed us

They feed us

They pour down our throats

Food for the spirit!!

500 metres of trichinae of sermons

Faded tapeworms of newspapers

Sweet

Virulent

Bacilli of words…


Europa (1931) (c) Themerson Estate


The poem is about social crisis, loss of moral equity, with Europe at the edge of a precipice. Stern described it: ‘my dry chronicle devoted to the tragedy, the misery, the wisdom and the wickedness of Europe’ although I’m not sure he was specifically discussing the Mail, Telegraph and Sun… he might as well have been.


Stefan and Franciszka Themerson translated these words into moving images with photograms and collages… they did later consider adding a score having used Tchaikovsky’s music, and so, in some ways Muns faced a similar challenge of interpretation. Music, film and poem together create a more defined understanding.


The film opens with bleached negatives of grass and flower growing – the Themersons had grass growing between two paving stones in their apartment so they could show it slowly forcing its way through; nature will out.


Europa (1931) (c) Themerson Estate


Then we see a lean worker, some knives and an overweight businessman eating meat from various angles. The press, radio and other speakers spout the divisive rhetoric mentioned above, some smile, others get angry… more close ups of mastication, greasy lips, intercut with newspapers… a man being force fed newsprint another smoking a cigar. 90 years on and we still tell you not to fund hate and not to buy the Sun…


A gun appears a man falls to the ground, then we see what looks like an x-ray of a beating heart, a recurring motif that was set up in the Themersons house. Images of war, German soldiers from the Great War barbed wire, then a naked man holding a cross and having nails banged through his palm before we cut to dancing girls and the population being distracted.


It’s possible to stop start and dissect the rapid cuts and montage now of course but following this all on screen in 1933, you’d feel a bit like Alex in A Clockwork Orange: so much stimulation some almost too fast to process. Did the Themersons invent subliminal messaging? Maybe that’s why their film survived?


Europa (1931) (c) Themerson Estate


Boxing – organised fighting – leads to another beating heart pause before we see fish and a jellyfish… musical instruments then fruit and a negative image of a man eating and apple. We’re assailed with apples sliced and running on three production lines… knowledge? Or mass produced pseudo-knowlegde?


Numbers, maths, architecture dance or is it worship… nature and stop-motion leaves. Apples on pavements… the grass growing tall, forcing cracks… slowly our nature destroys order. Cities and towns, like trees, fall. People running and afraid… disruption, a close up of naked women, repeated images from earlier. A woman dives superimposed over the heart… the film finishes.


Europa is one to study for understanding especially as occasionally the film is very literal in its interpretation of the poem, showing the “throng of raging bacchantes…” as “One centimetre of my skin” even while it is mostly puzzles your mind has to pattern.


Europa (1931) (c) Themerson Estate


It stands alone as does the poem and now the music and taking all three together in a packed NFT1 was potent indeed. The force of history weighs down and is expressed through this film and it has meaning anew through the very fact of its survival.


It’s a work of art we should celebrate and ignore at our peril.

 

Europa reel original 35mm nitrate now at BFI National Archive 


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