Asylrecht / Report on the Refugee Situation, January 1949

Asylrecht.

Asylrecht (Bericht über die Flüchtlingslage Januar 1949) / [Diritto di asilo]
    Director: Rudolf Werner Kipp. Year: 1949. Country: Germania Ovest. Scen.: Rudolf Werner Kipp. F.: Hans Böcker, Erich Stoll, Rudolf Werner Kipp. M.: Marcel Cleinow. Prod.: Deutsche Dokumentarfilm GmbH, Institut für Film und Bild in Wissenschaft und Unterricht (FWU). 35 mm. D.: 37’. Bn.
    Finland: film control 25 Feb 1986 / 93581 / 16 mm – 395 m / SEA.
    Copy from Das Bundesarchiv by courtesy of Transit Film.
    Introduce Olaf Möller.
    Viewed at Sala Scorsese, Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato (“We Are the Natives of Trizonia”: Inventing West German Cinema, 1945–49), with e-subtitles in Italian and English, 22 June 2019.

Olaf Möller (Il Cinema Ritrovato): "Asylrecht is a curious production: medium-length, an unclassifiable cross between documentary and fiction, commissioned by the British Film Section, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, shown for the first time in the FRG on the occasion of a refugee congress, and never regularly released but by way of non-commercial distribution available in various versions for decades. You could call it a crypto classic, as you could several other works of Rudolf Werner Kipp, a master of educational filmmaking who in this his finest achievement did honour to his professed main inspiration, John Grierson. Kipp filmed with real refugees, in actual camps; while in many cases scenes were arranged with their participation, some of the most dramatic moments were shot using a hidden camera. The refugees whose plight we learn about here mainly try to leave the Soviet occupied areas for the Trizone, but not everybody could enter. This is curious considering that the FRG would need every person able to work (in fact, later shorts about refugees stress exactly this as the main argument for being less hostile towards the strangers). In the film’s most haunting shots, groups of refugees walk like spectres through misty woods and meadows – lost to the world, having fallen through." Olaf Möller

AA: Again there is little to add to Olaf Möller's program note.

There is a unique quality in this footage of refugees. This film is unique in its particularity and timeless in its still topical message about the universal conditions of a massive refugee calamity.

The shocked children, the exhausted refugees deep in sleep, the feeding of children, organizing schools for children, medical examinations, dealing with horrible malnutrition.

There are four million German refugees in the British zone, a constant stream of prisoners-of-war from Russia, 30.000 refugees every day, illegal immigrants are returned, special trains are arranged.

Remarkable.

Visual quality: low contrast at times, but also technically brilliant footage.