From Greece
This block focuses on the importance of immediacy and being present. Nestler's films are generally concerned with the past, but they also strongly relate to their own present – to contemporary forms of oppression that are transformative, dormant, and persistent, as in Utlänninger: Del 1. All of this culminated in Von Griechenland, which led to Nestler's exile to Sweden. Nestler was filming in Greece in 1964–65, just two years before the consolidation of the military dictatorship. His images were shot in great haste, and his tense narration suggests the violent, pre-coup atmosphere, terror among the people, the looming shadow of guns, cameras and lies.
Von Griechenland is a film of the moment, a prophecy of the fascism to come, and a retrospective analysis going back to WWII and the Civil War of 1946-49. Even amidst chaos, Nestler captures one of the purest and most desolate still images of his oeuvre, which evokes certain death and the anticipatory mourning.
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/)
