Europa was the first film by Polish pioneers Stefan and Francizka Themerson. Believed lost for over seventy years, this rediscovered masterpiece stands as one of the great works of twentieth century European avant-garde filmmaking. In 1925, the magazine Reflektor published Anatol Stern’s futurist poem Europa, which is where it first appeared. Subsequently, it was republished in other magazines but in 1929 it became a book designed by two avant-garde artists, Mieczysław Szczuka and Teresa Żarnower. The content found its reflection in the design. With Europe at the edge of a precipice, the poem was about social crisis and loss of moral equity. Stern described it, “my dry chronicle devoted to the tragedy, the misery, the wisdom and the wickedness of Europe”. Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, inspired by the poem, turned it into a film translating the words into moving images with photograms and collages. The film was made in Warsaw in 1931/32 in the Themersons’ bedroom on ulica Królewska. It was as emotive on screen as the poem was on the pages of the book. When the Themersons moved to Paris in 1938 to continue their work, they took Europa and their other films with them. In 1940, about six months after World War II had broken out, Stefan Themerson deposited their five films at the Vitfer Film Laboratory in Paris, and it was from there that the Nazis took them. The last time that Europa had been screened was in Poland during the early 1930s. In 2019, the film was rediscovered by the Pilecki Institute in the Bundesarchiv, Berlin, and subsequently restored by Fixafilm, Warsaw, and a newly commissioned soundtrack was composed by Lodewijk Muns.

Courtesy of the artist and LUX, London

• Sektion Section: Film
• Programm Programme: Give