INDUSTRIAL ELEGY

Beauty and grime, black soot and bright colours, sunflowers in the front gardens, decaying heavy industry in the background – that’s the picture the Zofinka estate on the outskirts of the north Moravian town Ostrava now presents, viewed from inside a polished vintage car taking a drive down memory lane. Daniela Gébová has produced a monument to the region, to its history of toil in the steel foundries and coalmines, and above all to its people. And what shines through the surface bleakness is the spirit and poise of the former colliery workers and miners, whose confidence the director won. Elderly now, they tell her what things were like back then, sing the old songs, unearth old photos and awards. They have very precise recollections of the old days that were not, we may safely assume, always good. But some things pale in the remembering, too – like the filth down the pit, the illnesses, the inadequate sanitation – especially since back then, in the immediate post-WW2 era, the community was intact. Social life orbited round the busy restaurant in the railway station, and there would even be queues in front of the adjacent tobacco kiosk. The collective spirit that prevailed is evident from old film footage showing the documentary’s subjects in their youth. Today, there is only one colliery worker continuing in the tradition of his forebears, while on the horizon the giant cooling towers of a power station spew dark steam into the skies. The aesthetic complexity of such images makes visible the metamorphosis undergone by a once flourishing landscape. And even if the region is in decline, it still attracts people who would fare even worse elsewhere: Sinti and Roma have moved into the grey sheds. They make a living by collecting the one commodity this part of the world has in abundance: scrap metal. German premiere.