Time
Nestler takes an interest in craftsmanship rather than the specific processes of production: the hand in Hur gör man glas? (Maskinell) is engaged in factory work; in Uppför Donau, the ship’s cook makes spatzles from scratch for the workers’ lunch; and in Zeit we see peasants carving, and making and painting engravings.
In this film, the Nestlers turn their attention to traditional art forms and artists. They capture, attentively and astutely, seven Hungarian artists connected to peasant culture, and their artwork, which depicts tragic events from their lives, childhood memories, and their work flow. The personal creative forms of the artists outline a collective remembering: Zeit is the story of time confined in objects, and of the past living on with the artist.
Peter Nestler (b.1937) is one of the most singular and important filmmakers to emerge in postwar Germany. In the early 1960s Nestler made a series of poetic films about the changing realities in rural and industrial areas and about the working class communities, mostly in Germany, but also in the UK, where he filmed A Working Men's Club in Sheffield (1965). In the same year he directed From Greece (1965), on the rise of and struggle against fascism followed by the unsparing and exigent In the Ruhr Area (1967). Opposition to his political views and film aesthetics led Nestler to Sweden, where he worked mostly for television. Since the 1970s, Nestler has directed an extraordinary body of work further expanding the form and themes of his first films, including history, the working class, anti-fascism, the history of labour and production, and immigration. In the past 20 years, Nestler's films have continued to focus on change, remembrance and preservation, as exemplified by The North Calotte (1991), a remarkable travelogue tracing the harmful effects of industrialisation on the Sami communities and the landscape of Northern Europe.
(Source: https://dafilms.com/)
