Fri, Jan 14 at 3:00 PM ET
MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2
Sat, Jan 22 at 1:00 PM ET
MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2
Sun, Feb 6 at 1:30 PM ET
MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 1

More info & tickets on MoMA’s website.

This film accompanies “To Save and Project”—the 18th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation.

Europa. 1931. Poland. Directed by Stefan Themerson, Franciszka Themerson. 4K digital restoration by Fixafilm Warsaw with a new score by Lodewijk Muns; courtesy LUX and the Themerson Estate. Special thanks to the Polish Cultural Institute. North American premiere. Silent; English intertitles. 12 min.

The sole surviving copy of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson’s anti-fascist avant-garde film Europa was destroyed by the Nazis in wartime Paris…or so we’ve believed for the past 80 years. After its dramatically tortuous journey through the Cold War, a copy of the film was recently unearthed in the German Bundesarchiv thanks to the tenacious efforts of the Themerson family, and here makes its North American premiere in a fierce and almost heartbreaking restoration. The film is considered a holy grail of Polish experimental cinema, a cry against all forms of barbarism and exploitation in which the Themersons, before their flight from Warsaw in 1938, breathed life into Anatol Stern’s 1925 futurist poem of the same name through an arsenal of experimental techniques, including percussive montage, X-rays and collage, underwater photography, and Constructivist typography.

The program also includes:
Arbeitslos. Ein Schicksal Von Millionen (Unemployed: The Destiny of Millions). 1933. Germany. Written and directed by Willy Zielke. With Beppo Brem. 4K digital reconstruction of the original version courtesy the Munich Filmmuseum. North American premiere. In German; English subtitles. 21 min.

Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt? (Kuhle Wampe, or Who Owns the World?). 1932. Germany. Directed by Slatan Dudow. Screenplay by Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Ottwald. With Hertha Thiele, Ernst Busch, Martha Wolter. 2K digital restoration by the Deutsche Kinemathek; courtesy Praesens-Film AG. North American premiere. In German; English subtitles. 74 min.

Lead image: Credit: © Themerson Estate. Copyright: © Themerson Estate.