Long walks through almost deserted cityscapes which even in the late 1970s still bear the distinct scars of the Second World War: a Belgian filmmaker encounters West Berlin. She tries to re-adjust in this terrain saturated with European history and films this transformation in the first person singular. The images of twilight captured on grainy 16mm footage make Berlin look like a city that lies deep in the East, even though it sees itself as a Western city. But Annik Leroy mistrusts the mirror images: they don’t help if you want to see things more clearly.

On 29 April 1959, Hessian Broadcasting transmitted an alarming survey of the Federal German school system. The first of three parts of the report “Focus on Our Youth” investigates the question of what has stuck in the minds of higher form students about Hitler’s and Ulbricht’s Germanies. Hesse under Polish administration? Hitler sold badges to come to power? At least they are about right concerning the number of murdered Jews – that is, the third who could think of anything to say about this at all. One television critic rightly pointed out that this represented the sum total of all parental table talk. But were these parents watching television on 29 April 1959?